The Retail Razor Show

S1E9 – Retail Transformers – April Sabral Welcome to Season 1, Episode 9 of The Retail Razor Show! With this episode we introduce a new series– Retail Transformers! Who are the people in retail changing how we look at the business, how we're operating, redefining and reimaging what retail is? These individuals are transformers in every sense – they truly are more than meets the eye! In this episode we meet April Sabral, CEO of RetailU, online training for the next generation of retail leaders, and author of the book, The Positive Effect, A Retail Leader’s Guide To Changing The World. April shares with us her retail journey, what she has learned about leadership along the way, and how she applies that to train the next generation of retail leaders. If you’re working with aspiring retail leaders, want to better understand what makes a great retail leader, or just want to learn how to grow your retail career to the net level – this episode is for you! Have you heard! Our podcast is staying strong on the Feedspot Top 60 Retail podcasts list! We’re currently at #22, so please give us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts if you like the show! With your help, we’ll be on our way to a Top 20 spot! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your hosts:I’m Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and lead partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. And I’m Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. I've spent my career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business. Now I slay franken-stacks! Together, we’re your guides on the retail transformation journey. Whether you're thinking digital and online, mobile, or brick & mortar stores, we’ll help you cut through the clutter! The Retail Razor ShowFollow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazorConnect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazorJoin our club on Clubhouse: http://bit.ly/RRazorClubListen to us on Callin: https://bit.ly/RRCallinSubscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTubeSubscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShowRetail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar,Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmarConnect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmarRead my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden,Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCaseyConnect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICaseyRead my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPTS1E9 Retail Transformers - April Sabral[00:00:00][00:00:20] Introduction[00:00:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hello! Good morning. Good afternoon. And good evening, whatever time of day you're listening. Welcome. Welcome to season one episode nine of the retail razor show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar a RETHINK Retail top retail influencer and lead partner marketing advisor for retail and consumer goods at Microsoft.[00:00:35] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host Casey Golden CEO of Luxlock Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. I've spent my career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business. Now I slay Frank and stacks.[00:00:49] Ricardo Belmar: So Casey, this is a truly momentous episode for us. We finally are launching our Retail Transformers series.[00:00:56] Casey Golden: Yeah. I'm actually quite thrilled. We've been talking about how there are so many people in retail right now that are really changing how we look at the business, how we're operating and what we need to do next and so much more. This is such an exciting time for this industry and they are true transformers In every sense.[00:01:18] Ricardo Belmar: In fact one might say they are truly more than meets the eye.[00:01:22] Casey Golden: that was smooth.[00:01:23] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I'm pretty skilled at that, actually. So you can give me, give me any small moment to work in a cool eighties, pop culture reference. I am all in on that.[00:01:29] Casey Golden: I'm sure the appreciation will make it into the comments. Anyway, let's talk about our amazing first interviewee. April Sabral[00:01:37] Ricardo Belmar: April is absolutely amazing. As listeners will find out in this episode, she's really transforming how retail leadership is evolving. April's got such a wonderful perspective on how retail teams should be managed, how people should be treated and so much to say about what leadership looks like for a modern retailer.[00:01:55] Casey Golden: A hundred percent. I mean, I really can't think of a more important conversation to be having right now. So let's cut through the clutter and get right to the interview. So kickback or keep your eyes on the road and listen to our session with April Sabral, founder and CEO of Retail U online leadership training for retail managers and author of the book, the positive effect, retail leaders guide to changing the world.[00:02:19][00:02:19] April Sabral Interview[00:02:19] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome to the show April. It's great to have you here. We've been planning for this for some time and so glad to finally make it happen![00:02:29] April Sabral: Thanks. Yeah, I'm excited to be here.[00:02:31] Casey Golden: April, absolute pleasure. Just to get started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you're focused on now? What brought you to this, this moment? And how do you see your role transforming leadership in retail?[00:02:44] April Sabral: Yeah. So I'm the founder and CEO of retail U which is an online leadership learning platform for field operators. After having a 30 year career in retail, working through the stores, all the different ranks, all the way up to vice president just really found an opportunity to build affordable leadership development.[00:03:03] And what I'm focused on now is really helping leaders transform their leadership in this new era of empathy and compassion and connecting with people. And so I've been focused on you know, getting retail U out there , along with the book that I just wrote introducing a new leadership methodology that I've used over my 30 year career.[00:03:23] And so I'm coaching and teaching that hour and doing a lot of leadership development coaching right now.[00:03:28] Casey Golden: That's great. I actually ordered it. I haven't read it yet. But we brought it over to like our head of talent and really super excited to, to read.[00:03:38] April Sabral: Oh, amazing. Thank you.[00:03:41] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I've been in the midst of reading it myself and I've been thoroughly enjoying it. I'm finding a lot of really interesting nuggets on I'm going to be popping a few of those in, as we, as we go to get more details from you because you've had such a really interesting journey.[00:03:55] I find just from reading the experience you've described in the book from all the various retail roles that you've had you know, like you said, just starting from, front lines in the store all the way to being VP and heading up stores. You mentioned a number of really valuable lessons that you learned along the way and particularly around managing people in retail. So I'd really love for you to kind of tell us a little bit about some of those , and maybe think of what kind of advice would you give to other retail employees on, on how to build their retail career and really growing into one of those retail management roles.[00:04:26] April Sabral: well, I think that, you know, along the way certainly when I started off in retail, I didn't think of it as a career choice. Right. I share a lot about that in the book. It was like a part-time job that I got when I[00:04:37] Ricardo Belmar: Right.[00:04:38] April Sabral: moving out of home. And it just, you know, Started providing me a way to, to pay for my bills and look after myself when I was younger.[00:04:46] And so, however, you know, I think that I was very fortunate because I worked for a huge brands back in the day at pivotal times for them when they were entering new markets. For example, like when Starbucks came to the UK and when the gap came to the UK, I happened to be there. And I was a part. That expunction and then moving to the U S with Starbucks and then to Canada with Banana Republic.[00:05:08] So I do think I had great opportunities along the way. The one thing I would say about retail, or if you're a manager or if you're not a manager and you're just a part-time sales person to really see it as an opportunity to build your people skills because your people skills are life skills, Right.[00:05:24] And retail, we teach people life skills, like how to problem solve, how to have confidence in speaking to people how to sell something even like, you know, in life, you've got to sell yourself every single day, whether you're in an, a job or whether you're an entrepreneur. So I think that there's just so many skills that you learn. And my journey along the way, I was fortunate, like I said, I worked for those mega brands back in the day and they had really good leadership development programs back then, they were really invested in their people.[00:05:50] This was before e-comm came about. So it was a really big focus on talent. And so, what, I've learned along the way is that if you continue to grow, develop your skills and invest in yourself, then you will have a great career and you can move up the ranks and get compensated for it. You know, frontline employees always see it as a job as like, it's not a great career choice because I think they're underpaid.[00:06:11] But once you start moving into manager multi-site and moving up, everything changes. So that's why I think it's a great career choice. And I also think that it's a huge career because you can move around the world with it. You know, it employs, millions of people. So I think we need to start looking at it a little bit differently.[00:06:28] And so I would say, work hard sign up for things. If there's different projects that you can get on or transformation happening within your organization, say, yes, I did that a lot. Like I moved around a lot. I was willing to take risks and move to different countries even, or different districts to just take on projects and get myself known.[00:06:49] And I was always really good with people. And so that just really helped me. I was one of the easiest people to manage, I would say, and the easiest, really easy person to get along with. And just, and that helped me deliver the results that they were asking of me. And so every time I moved up and took on more responsibility, the results would just keep growing.[00:07:07] So yeah, you have to deliver results, but you have to do that through a team of people.[00:07:12] Casey Golden: traditionally, it's pretty hard to make the jump from being on the floor and read. Into corporate, any advice there on how to make that.[00:07:24] April Sabral: Yeah.[00:07:24] There's not a lot of us that have done that, me and Ron, talk about that all the time and, and how we can help that in our industry continue to build that because there's so many great people in the field. I think it's about building those relationships in advance. Like in the book, I talk about an experience when I first got promoted from a district supervisor into a director role.[00:07:45] So that was that first experience of going from like field leadership, into working with corporate partners. And I had a lot of feedback given to me that wasn't super positive at the time. I had. Sells re results for the awards for the, you know, the four years leading up to that. So people saw me as very highly competitive and the team that I was going to assume didn't really want to work for me.[00:08:08] So I had to take some humble pie, take that feedback on and then realize that the relationships that I had, weren't just about the relationships with the people that report into me, but really the relationships that I worked alongside with. And so if you want to get promoted and you want to be successful and work with your corporate partners, you need to have those relationships in advance so that you can influence the things you need to influence.[00:08:33] And you have the backing because now it's not just about your team in the field, you have this huge team of support in the office. But if you don't know how to build those relationships, guess what? They're not going to help you. They don't know what your job is. So I think just building those relationships and networking with them, just like you would on LinkedIn, right?[00:08:51] Like network with your corporate partners and think about collaboration and, and don't think like, what are they doing and why are they rolling out this out to us and complain about them? Instead see yourself as a conduit to kind of help them help you and I think that's something that we really need to teach and build that bridge between the field and the head office.[00:09:10] Ricardo Belmar: of the things I noticed you, you mentioned quite a bit in the book that maybe gets lost sometimes in this industry is that a lot of the roles are defined as sort of a sales leadership role, but you point out many times in the book that you really need to see yourself as a people leader, not just a sales.[00:09:27] And I guess just based on what you just said, right? A lot of it has to do with how you interact with the people you're leading and the teams that are in the field. And as well as everyone around you, not just focusing on those sales performance numbers.[00:09:41] April Sabral: Yeah, a hundred percent. It's like, you know, we build relationships with our customers, right? Why do we do that? Because we want to get money out of them. And we want to have them coming back to us and feel good about the experience. And so it is sales is a relationship driven business. So if you want to sell your employees and get them to do something for you for the organization, well guess what, then you need to have a really strong relationship with them because every employee wants to feel three things from their boss that they're cared for, that they can trust them and that they they're going to help them do the job better. And that only comes from a relationship. So, I'm a very results driven leader. And so I had to learn to cook. You know, yes, the results really matter, but the results is an outcome of how you're leading your team. at the end of the day, people get up and come to work every day, wanting to do a good job and for the person that they work for. And if they don't like the person, they work for good luck getting results out of them. It's just not going to happen. You think about that in your own life, right?[00:10:41] Every time you've had a boss and you've loved them, you're like, oh, I love going to work. I want to do a good job. And when you have somebody that's just a pain. It just can control your life. So it really is about positive relationships. I can't say that enough.[00:10:55] Casey Golden: I always think of do I want this person to win? Right? Because we all work together so much. And it's so much of a back and forth and it's just like, you know, I want them to want me to win. But then at the same time, you want to work with people who you believe in and you want to win and you genuinely will build that relationship and be like, how can I help you?[00:11:13] April Sabral: Yeah. And it's funny, right? Because like, when we talk about retail to other people, the let's say I'm in a dinner party or I'm somewhere, and there's not a lot of retail folks. They'd be like, well, you know, you just sell clothes, right. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. We drive millions of dollars and like lead thousands of people and make an impact on their life every day.[00:11:33] Right. So I think there's a misperception about what we do. And if you ask anybody in the field. Nine times out of 10, why they love what they do in retail, especially at a leadership level. They always say it's the development of people because coaching really exists in the field teams because we're always coaching for performance.[00:11:53] Just like, a basketball coach, who's coaching his team on the, on the court. It's the same idea. So I think. We're very fortunate in the fact that coaching really does exist and people already passionate about, and that's why I say it's not just a sales business, right? It's a people business.[00:12:09] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I was probably one of the most hidden things I think in retail, right? It's this aspect of coaching in the field, that has always been there. I just. Talk about it enough because we always focus so much on the selling,[00:12:21] April Sabral: a hundred percent. But if you think about sales floor leadership, most companies have flow leadership, cell phone leadership programs, and it's all about coaching[00:12:30] Ricardo Belmar: That's right.[00:12:31] April Sabral: in the moment.[00:12:31] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah,[00:12:36] Casey Golden: obviously a lot of the focus in this book is really about positivity. Both how you see your career goals and how you. Others in your organization, you talk about how leaders are in a position to foster creativity and imagination to develop new ideas, but you also kind of remind leaders that they don't have to act on every idea that their team presents.[00:12:58] But they need to be acknowledged. This is an interesting point because I know that there are so many leaders that believe the opposite of this. And they, they don't have to embrace every idea. In order to recognize the contribution of those team members, how do you coach leaders to embrace this approach?[00:13:14] Because store teams can be quite large and there can be a lot of ideas. And it's not a very formal process of write down all of your ideas from all of these stores. And then I'm going to put it in a, put it in a pivot. I mean, it is so much of just taking in all of this information. And where do you, where do you feel like some, some great recommendations for a manager today that is looking for those contributions? How would you recommend that they kind of extract that?[00:13:50] April Sabral: I mean that's Yeah. That's, there's so many ways now, like when I was at David's tea, we had an app called nudge. Right. And so that was a way for field employees to kind of write everything down and give feedback. And at the office we could say, Like, like real time, because we would ask questions about things and they would provide their feedback.[00:14:10] So I think there's lots of technology that can help with that. I think the number one thing is, like you said, that people think that they have to embrace every idea and act on every idea to make people feel acknowledged. I don't agree with that because the thing is, there'll be really great ideas floating around out there.[00:14:27] And some of them know. That's just, you know, that just can't do that. Maybe it's like the budget's not there or you just don't have the time to do it because you can't focus on 25 things and do it well. Right? Like you can only focus on a few things and do it well. And so, I think this idea of acknowledging what people are contributing in their ideas is very important because in the book I talk about making every person feel valued on your team. And so to make somebody feel valued, they have to be seen and heard. It doesn't mean to say that you have to execute their strategy or their idea. That's not what most people are looking for.[00:15:03] Most people are looking for just to feel like I said, seen and heard. So just acknowledging that and saying, "That's a really great idea and thank you so much, but maybe we'll park it and we'll bring it back out and we'll use it next time." And I think most people want transparency.[00:15:20] The worst thing you can do is ask for a whole load of ideas, not use them and never acknowledged that they were given. Right. So I think that leaders just need to have managerial courage. I think it's just being transparent with your team and not feeling pressured, but one of the biggest things that I coach on is leaders having that managerial courage to be able to be transparent with their team.[00:15:43] Nobody likes conflict and nobody likes going into a conversation where conflict could occur. But it's not it's, it's just human nature. We just don't like that. We kind of shy away from it. So they don't know how to deal with difficult conversations. Right. If you think about people and performance management, it's the same kind of idea, but it really isn't about that.[00:16:02] It's just, just acknowledge it. Like, thank you so much for that idea and acknowledging everybody's idea, but yeah, you get 150 ideas. There's no way you're going to be able to act on them. You're going to have to pick a few that are going to work with that strategy at that time. Right.[00:16:17] Ricardo Belmar: and you know, that reminds me of, you mentioned in the book, you, you, your formulas, so to speak for, for this successful process, you call it your act model or accept, create and teach. Right. And you also talk about leading with awareness, which I think was a really critical point and how you accomplish that can kind of walk us through that model and tell us more about, you know, the importance of leading with awareness.[00:16:40] April Sabral: Yeah. I mean, I'm a self-development junkie, right? My whole life, I have been focused on just self development and reading self-help books and what that has done for me has made me a very self-aware person. Like I know when I've messed up. You know, every boss I've ever had, they're like, we don't need to tell you what you've not done.[00:17:00] Right. Because you actually know before somebody else tells you because I'm very self-reflective. And so I think going back to leading people and building relationships, the more self-aware you are about how you contribute to that relationship and your communication tone connection the better result you're going to get out of people because you're going to be paying attention, being mindful, being present. . And that just comes again from my years of self-development. And so when I lead that self-awareness is really important and I filter it into this model because this is the way that I've led for over 25 years and incorporates yes, my professional coaching training, if you like.[00:17:43] But it also incorporates that mindful piece of being present through my self development journey. So the first step. "Accept" it's about being supportive and having no judgment and assumptions on people. This is one of the hardest things for leaders to do because we all judge people, right? There's so much training out there on bias now and inclusion and our natural ways that we do make assumptions and judgements on people.[00:18:10] And it's simple things like the way somebody looks, the way somebody dressed The way our sister treated us yesterday, like so many things that we judge people on, but when you lead a team it's really, really important that you help them feel supported and encouraged to be themselves. And all the stores that I ever visited every time I would ask a leader what makes them feel successful? It was always around when they felt they were showing up to work, being their whole self and that their boss could see them and hear them. So that's what that pillar is all around. It really teaches leaders to , look at that judgment, stop making assumptions, managing the moment and being present, and really accepting people for who they are.[00:18:51] And then "create" Is all around being responsible and responsible with your thinking and your envisioning, because I'm a big believer in the law of cause and effect ,[00:19:02] and manifesting things. Like I know that sounds like a little bit of a spiritual idea and a bit hokey pokey, but honestly it's like nothing is created until you think about it first, you think about a business. anything you think about this business and you have to like mindfully envision it and then you put the plan in work. Right? So create is all about how you create this into your business and thinking mindfully.[00:19:25] I mean, I used to sit there on Monday mornings and kind of envision what I wanted my week to look like my conversations to look like. I just watched actually. The Serena Williams story over the weekend on a plane. And I was watching her father and I was like, he was totally demonstrating, create in action.[00:19:42] Cause he was like, there was no way my kids are going to fail. They're going to be the best tennis players. And it was the way that he showed up every day. He just created that. So that's what that pillar teaches leaders. And I really think that that needs to be talked about more in business. I think entrepreneurs get it a lot.[00:19:58] And then "teach" is really about being selfless and being a mentor and a coach. So if you take a coach approach to leadership, you'll always be passing on knowledge and you'll always be teaching people and it will make you less frustrated because. So many leaders I work with, like I told that person that and why aren't they doing it?[00:20:16] And I'm thinking, well, did you actually coach them on their performance? And did you actually help them understand and train them? And so those are the three pillars wrapped up. And so I kind of looked at it as like, it's a way of being, that's why I say it's leading with awareness because if you can have more awareness of what your contribution is, you'll have a very highly engaged team.[00:20:37] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think that's really spot on . I'm sure we've all been in large corporate organizations where it seemed like the upper tiers of management felt that the obligation was to reward their best performers by just deciding to turn them into managers and leaders in the organization, but never actually giving them the tools , or the methodology on how to actually lead a team.[00:20:57] I think they kind of assume that, well, if they could manage a project, they could manage a group of people. And that's not always the case, but it's not an automatic thing. If you don't take into account all the different points you just mentioned April, I think that's a really great way to frame that[00:21:11] April Sabral: Yeah. And like you normally in retail, it's like usually the best sales person on the sales floor that gets promoted. Right, And then all of a sudden they have like five, 10 people and it's not going so well. And then your top performer, it's not your top performer anymore[00:21:24] Ricardo Belmar: more, Yeah. Yeah. Cause it's just the, see in the management changes to assume assumes that because they hit the numbers so well that they can automatically lead everyone else in doing the same thing.[00:21:34] Casey Golden: Well, where are you guys working? You would get top sales and like, well, we can't take you off the floor. I'm like, let me create 20 of my me. But can't take you off the floor. You do too much in sales. No, I mean, I think that's great. I mean, we have all had great managers and we've all had learning experiences from not so great managers, but I think, I think there there's something to be said that retail is so many people's first job. And this is really like that building block of you're essentially installing work ethic and process for the first time.[00:22:12] April Sabral: Yeah. Yeah. And also you're giving somebody, and this is another thing, right? I have a 24 year old, 24 year old daughter, and she was sharing a story with me and Ron about her first retail job and how terrible it was. Experience because of her boss. Right.[00:22:26] And me and him were like cringing at lunch. Cause we were like, oh, this is so many people's story.[00:22:32] And the thing is, we're trying to fuel retail with newer leaders because we need them cause bricks and mortar are not going away. And one of the big gaps now is that middle management. And so it starts off with your first job. I was. 17 when I got my first job in retail and I had a great boss. And so it sets the tone.[00:22:52] Right. And so that, you know, it's so important, like you said, it's the first time somebody's having a first experience of having a boss and a work environment. And, we need to really take responsibility for that and help our managers for say, managers that are like 20, 21, you know, managing an 18 year old.[00:23:09] How are they doing that? You know, like we really need to help them with that.[00:23:13] Casey Golden: Yeah, I agree. And if that manager feels like that there is communication and there is way to move up in the company. They're less likely to push down to keep from taking, you know, cause they, they don't feel like they have. So it really gives you that position of leadership to, to inspire team. I loved like my team, like being a manager to like I had 17 year old, 16, 17 year olds.[00:23:35] And it's just one of my favorite retail experiences, because I got to be their first boss. I still talk to these people most like 18 years later. And they're "Casey, like you inspired me to get in the fashion industry." I'm like, they're like an SVP that Nike now. And I'm like, I'm sorry. It does. It opens up that whole world of like, whatever they're doing and wherever they go, you get to be that moment in somebody's mind of their first work experience. And you get to be that first amazing boss that I've ever had, or you get to be that pain point that changes their perspective of leadership, even moving forward for years, potentially.[00:24:22] That is your first moment.[00:24:24] Ricardo Belmar: And it really sets that that first impression is so strong, especially when you think about the age groups we're talking about. And we had this come up in one of our previous episodes where we talked with I think Ron was in that discussion. And in fact, what a Gotham from the George Mason university retail center, and he even pointed out, or when he first asked students in one of his classes, you know, who here has a retail job.[00:24:48] Lots of students raised their hands. Yeah, they had, they were in a retail job. And then he, when he asked them, how many of you plan on pursuing a retail career and all the hands went down because they all had a bad, first impression and most likely because of, what their experience was. And if we don't do something to change that experience, and what's going to motivate people to pursue a career in this industry[00:25:07] Casey Golden: Yeah. So, I mean, this kind of brings us back to, you know, you might say it's the reason we're having this conversation today and why the show exists and you know, some, a lot of the motivation behind your book, we're experiencing a movement in retail around changing how frontline staff is treated both by the customer but more importantly by retailer, management teams and where they sit into an organization. I mean, we've had these conversations with Ron Thurston who we're, we've all had I mean, everybody adores him B because it does, we all have that shared experience right. Of having that first retail job that we're able to build a lot of these things off of when retailers think and talk about wanting to change these behaviors the initial why right? That, that initial why? And because my initial, why for my company was the people who I worked with on the floor. I saw that they were hurting and. I wanted to help them. And that was, that was back in 2007 and it's kept me motivated to continue trying to build this solution to make sure that retail staff has a thriving career.[00:26:13] And I'm not even on the floor anymore. Right? I mean, we go through all of these different. Do you agree that like, maybe by seeing that transformation of how frontline workers are treated on their jobs, do you agree with, this, this whole conversation and this movement, like just really realigning that focus on making sure that that experience is a positive one.[00:26:38] April Sabral: Oh, Yeah.[00:26:39] a hundred percent. It should have always been a positive one. I just think that the investment in people got shifted to e-com in the last seven years. , cause that's where all the money went into, building your e-comm your channels, trying to figure out that whole customer journey.[00:26:53] And so leave like development of teams. But it's put in polls. Like there's a lot of companies that don't have proper onboarding programs for managers right now. And so I think that has to come back around. Pay is a big thing, you know, advocating for pay and like different incentive programs because comp sales, the traditional way of looking at comp doesn't incentivize people anymore because the sales have shifted the mix of the channels where it's coming from.[00:27:18] So I just think there's many different components that go into it. But one of the easiest things to do is just give your team training and development. So everybody wants you read any exit interview and the top two reasons why people leave is I'm not growing in my career and the person I work for, isn't helping me.[00:27:35] So it's just like, that's just something that can change an environment. And the clients at retail, U that have implemented the online leadership programs are seeing that in the surveys from the staff, like from just having that coaching and leadership development, full people, it gives them something additional that is not very expensive, but it's a very easy thing to do to shake that environment.[00:27:57] Casey Golden: So let's say if we were thinking about what are, what are a handful of things that we might be seeing on the transformation of this culture change? Because it's a huge culture change in the organization from like a corporate. Corporate side, from my perspective, we're looking at different compensation, strategies training and development.[00:28:19] Do you foresee anything else like that stands out that you feel is going to adjust over the next? Let's say two to five years when it comes to how the retail staff and how that really works.[00:28:32] April Sabral: I mean, I think they need to retell needs to embrace bringing on more coaches. I'm a leadership development coach, right? I'm a Forbes leadership development coach now. And I think that because we assume that way, such a high coaching, high touch environment in the stores, which we are, but at that middle level from district supervisor to director, That's where the gap is right now.[00:28:52] And I think that a lot of organizations bring on coaches, retailers don't really bring in people from the outside as coaches. So what I'm doing now is working with that middle level and to help make a difference and kind of succession planning people up. So I do think that we need to embrace that more and realize that you may have a leader like a VP or a director, but maybe they do need a leadership development coach to help them actually develop their team and succession plan and help that leadership. And I hope that that's embraced more because it's not something I was ever provided. I had to go and seek that myself outside of the organization that I worked for.[00:29:30] So I'm really hoping that that gets embraced more because what I'm excited about the future is new leadership coming into those senior spots. Like a lot of us now some of us have, we we've done it and we've been through it, but how do we get the next level up into these seats? Because they're going to be the leaders of the organizations in the next 10 years, and that's going to really shape it. ,[00:29:51] Casey Golden: I really want them to be the leaders over the next 10 years, you know? It's such being somebody who spent, you know, a, a good portion of my initial career on the floor. There's so much that you've learned that you want to take and do good with at corporate and being able to just even know that you can have a future, that it doesn't have to end with that, that store. I think it's just really, really important.[00:30:16] Ricardo Belmar: There really should be able to say that, you know, today's frontline workers are tomorrow's retail leaders because they have all the built-in to build. Right.[00:30:25] Casey Golden: Yeah, you can indirectly, right.[00:30:27] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. So April along those lines, and if you look out, you know, in case they ask you about the next two to five years, I'm going to be a little closer to near term, like over the next year. What, what are you most excited about when it comes to retail leadership? What do you think is most likely to change for the better.[00:30:42] April Sabral: Ooh, what am I most excited about that more people get retail U programs because people seem to be finding it now and embracing it. And I think it's a really good way to develop teams. And I just think, like I said, like more middle like that, more of that field leadership moving into. The additional roles, there's a lot of head of store roles posted right now, by the way, the most I've ever seen a lot of director roles.[00:31:06] So I think we've come through a massive shift in the last couple of years. A lot of people left those roles in those Chris because of what was going on and, and opted to do something else. So I think there's a big opportunity now for that management to move up and really take those seats. So that's what I'm really excited about.[00:31:21] Just seeing new leadership and new ideas and the new generation coming into that talent pool.[00:31:26] Casey Golden: How would you suggest someone wanting to go ahead and start taking the first step? Do you see that first step at corporate? Do you see it at that district level?[00:31:36] April Sabral: Yeah, , one of the things I'm working on right now with a few leaders is just development, planning sessions. So what does that actually look like? Because back in the day, when I was at Starbucks and I was at gap right before in e-comm and all of that came about, we had individual development planning sessions.[00:31:53] With competency base and we had it on paper and we had these two things that we have to focus on and I think that's really disappeared. So I think if you were going to stop wanting to grow in your career, you need to start tapping on your bosses shoulder and being like, okay, I need a plan, not an action plan to drive your sales.[00:32:11] But a personal development plan. And if you don't have one, there is so many tools out there. You could go and get one, because if you, somebody said to me a long time ago, if you leave your career in the hands of somebody else, you're going to be waiting for somebody else to promote you. So, you know, I took it upon myself like that whole self development journey.[00:32:29] Right to read books about leadership, to watch Ted talks, to put a plan on paper for my own personal development, my competencies that would help me drive my business. And FYI is an amazing book that I use with a lot of leaders, but I just think a development planning session. What are the two things that April's going to work on this to become better at my job, that's going to impact the results?[00:32:51] Is it my communication? Is it my managerial courage? Is it how to have performance conversations? What is it? And if you don't have that on paper right now, and you're in a, in a leadership role and you want to grow. You need to make sure that you have that. And unfortunately, that lacks skill in a lot of organizations.[00:33:09] So I find myself doing that with leaders and once they've left it, they're like, and I'm doing it with their boss and them. So usually it's like a district manager with a director and I'm sitting with them and we're assessing what they need to do to do the job. And, and they walk away going, man, I have a plan and six months later, people get promoted like all the time.[00:33:28] So I'm really good at promoting people in succession planning. It's because I focus on their development of skill, not just not just the action plan that needs to drive the results of the operational things, let's say, you know, it needs to be the people's side as well.[00:33:44] Casey Golden: Well, and then we'll also start with reading your book, right? Start the conversation. It'd be passive aggressive, drop it on some of these guys.[00:33:57] April Sabral: Well, and that's why I launched the second book. The lift purposely lead positively workbook because so many people read that book and they were like, but how do I actually turn this into a developed plan? I'm like, let me give you one. Now. Now there's a workbook with 15 activities that you can do to develop those skills.[00:34:15] Right.[00:34:15] Casey Golden: Oh, that's great. I I'm, I'm a fan of work books.[00:34:18] Ricardo Belmar: Well, April , thank you so much for joining us today. It's been such a pleasure hearing about your retail experience or your journey, everything that you're doing now with retail U. We probably haven't said it enough that our listeners should all run out and get a copy of your book if they haven't already, because there's so much fantastic advice and ideas on how to just improve your own retail career, as well as how you lead others.[00:34:42] So how can listeners reach out to you April? You know, learn more about retail u or just follow your work?[00:34:47] April Sabral: Yeah. So retail U like university.ca that's the website. So you can go on, check out everything that's going on there. And then I have my own, which is April Sabral.com, but you can find that through retail U or just connect with me on LinkedIn. And I always usually respond to people pretty fast.[00:35:04] So that's where you can find me.[00:35:05] Ricardo Belmar: Fantastic.[00:35:06] Well, I want to thank you again for joining us.[00:35:08] Casey Golden: I am excited. Everybody's going to be reading your book[00:35:10] Thank you so much for joining us.[00:35:14] Recap[00:35:14] Casey Golden: Welcome back everyone.[00:35:20] Ricardo Belmar: Well, Casey,, I would be surprised if this doesn't end up being one of our most popular episodes so far. I mean, April's background and experience has so much to offer retail leaders just to make themselves better, you know, better at running their business. And most importantly, better at leading their teams.[00:35:33] Casey Golden: Hundred percent.[00:35:34] We can't recommend enough that if you're leading retail teams.[00:35:38] you need to get a copy of April's book and really absorb what she's saying. You'll see the difference.[00:35:44] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. You know, Casey you've led retail teams before. And you mentioned in the session kind of how your philosophy around managing those teams aligns with April's. So what, what would your top tip be for retail leaders? Is it pretty much the same as what April said?[00:35:58] Casey Golden: Yeah, I could've stolen April for the entire show. There is a lot of overlap but I think a skill that, that lacks in management is learning how to be an advocate for change we have a lot of incredible talent on regional levels, but find a disconnect at corporate. April provides some great tools to be a good steward, not just from management and going downstream to their teams, but being able to develop those managers to be a good steward of getting that information and managing upstream. It's always been a gap. Even professionally moving from the field to corporate. The information flow and continuity is no different. So managing up, I think is a huge opportunity for a lot of different like HQ corporate to benefit from talent that they've been developing for years[00:36:49] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's a great point. April definitely had a lot to say about that. I can see what you mean about that gap. I think we've all, if we've worked with retailers have seen the differences between what's happening in the field with store teams versus what corporate's point of view is on that and necessarily, is it the same point of view?[00:37:04] So there's definitely an opportunity there in that upstream direction to get the information flow right, to really manage that part of the process so that everyone is getting the right learnings from those field teams. And I think April does a really good job too, of highlighting that in the book and in her retail U program on how to really set up those leaders for success, to really understand who it is they're leading[00:37:25] Casey Golden: I remember many times where it was a weekly conference call, but we didn't have the ability to talk. We just listened[00:37:34] every single person's phoning in to listen,[00:37:37] you know, so I think there's a huge opportunity here that April highlights[00:37:41] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah and I think you mentioned this too in April talks about it. You know, I just remember being in those store teams and when you'd hear that message would come through, oh, there's going to be a call with corporate has to review something or one of these other higher up regional managers is doing a store visit and everybody kind of panics that that's coming and you really shouldn't have to do that.[00:37:59] Right. That shouldn't happen. It should not be such a massively stressful thing. When somebody from corporate or one of the regional. Or like a VP or somebody comes through the, to the story team, you know, it should just be a normal mode of operation, right. Because if everything is going well, then you shouldn't have to worry about it.[00:38:13] And I think, the way April kind of positions this as a, as a leadership tool, it makes a difference here. There's that level of understanding that has to be there..[00:38:23] Casey Golden: I agree. I think we have such an opportunity over the last couple of years that the frontline workers have been highlighted and what these jobs feel like. And how they're being led. And then we have this great resignation as well. , and I, this is a hard job, but it's filled with a lot of passionate people that are highly skilled.[00:38:42] And, and I have to say most of them are overeducated. I know a lot of people with master's degrees that are on selling Salesforce at, in retail brands, they have master's degrees, they're fully qualified to have a voice.[00:38:56] they need the opportunity and some refreshers on some tools on getting that management, you know, up management, upstream management, to have those voices heard.[00:39:06] There's a lot of benefits.[00:39:07] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I mean, I really hope this episode helps listeners in those retail management positions, especially those that are managing store teams. Right. Understand how important they are, not just to the role they're filling, but to that overall employee experience. Hopefully they'll take away some useful lessons from what we talked about with April.[00:39:24] And, as you say, Casey, you gotta go out and get a copy of April's book. I think everyone. Yeah, in this industry can stand to learn quite a bit from it.[00:39:32] Casey Golden: Yeah. Sometimes you have to step back from the tech and realize we're all only human and recognize how you lead, how we're managing people is just as important to the business as anything else we do operationally or with technology.[00:39:48] Ricardo Belmar: A hundred percent agree with that. And on that note, Casey, I think it is time to wrap up this episode. Once again, we'll want to give a big, thank you out to April Sabral for spending some time with us and sharing her experience and knowledge. Thanks again, April, we look forward to having you back on the show.[00:40:03] Casey Golden: and that's a wrap!.[00:40:04][00:40:04] Show Close[00:40:04] Casey Golden: If you enjoy our show, please consider giving us that special five-star rating and review on apple podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. So you don't miss a minute. Want to know more about what we talked about today? Take a look at the show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your cohost, Casey Golden.[00:40:25] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about us, follow us on Twitter at casey-c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on LinkedIn, on Twitter at retail razor and on our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and the occasional bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.[00:40:41] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.[00:40:42] Ricardo Belmar: And remember there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter.[00:40:49] Until next time, this is the retail razor show.[00:40:52]

S1E8 – The Retail Avengers vs The Trials of Digital Transformation & Innovation, Part 2Welcome to Season 1, Episode 8 of The Retail Razor Show!For episode 8 we’re letting the Retail Avengers fly solo for Part 2 of our Digital Transformation & Innovation series and dig into understanding three key transformative technologies for retail – computer vision, Internet of Things, and 5G. Why are these so important for retailers, and how can retailers best use these technologies? Shish Shridhar and Trevor Sumner join our hosts for this lively discussion on Clubhouse!And big news! Our podcast is holding strong on the Feedspot Top 60 Retail podcasts list! We’re sitting steady at #21, so please do give us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts if you like the show! With your help, we’ll be on our way to a Top 10 spot! Check it out here: https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/I’m your host, Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and lead partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.And I’m your co-host, Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock and slayer of retail frankenstacks!Together, we’re your guides on the retail transformation journey. Whether you're thinking digital and online, mobile, or brick & mortar stores, we’ll help you cut through the clutter!The Retail Razor ShowFollow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazorConnect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazorJoin our club on Clubhouse: http://bit.ly/RRazorClubListen to us on Callin: https://bit.ly/RRCallinSubscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTubeSubscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShowRetail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPodHost → Ricardo Belmar,Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmarConnect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmarRead my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmarCo-host → Casey Golden,Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCaseyConnect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICaseyRead my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCaseyTRANSCRIPTS1E8 The Retail Avengers & The Trials of DX & Innovation, Part 2[00:00:20] Introduction[00:00:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hello. Good morning. Good afternoon. And good evening, whatever time of day you're listening. Welcome to season one episode eight of the Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar a RETHINK Retail top retail influencer and lead partner marketing advisor for retail and consumer goods at Microsoft.[00:00:36] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the relationship between a brand and a customer. I've spent my career on the fashion side and supply chain technology side of the business. Now I slay franken-stacks![00:00:50] Ricardo Belmar: Well, this week, we are circling back to our digital transformation and innovation topic. For part two of this discussion, we had two other members of our Retail Avengers team join us both this time, Shish Sridhar and Trevor Sumner. [00:01:05] Casey Golden: I really enjoyed our conversation. We dive into three super interesting transformation and innovation topics that we didn't get into in part one. Last time we dug into how retailers are embracing digital transformation and innovation and where that innovation comes from, whether it's inside or outside of their business.[00:01:26] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And that really set the stage for us by focusing on why today's retail, winners are winners and why others are well, not so much. [00:01:34] Casey Golden: Right. And maybe most importantly we discussed how much larger retailers and brands budgets are to invest in innovation, which is critical and frankly, new territory for a lot of brands. I don't think a lot of people realize how little investment has gone in to retail technology [00:01:54] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, it, it honestly, it's, this feels like a once in a generation change for most retail businesses to honestly, a really positive change to be sure where we're finally seeing the level of investment that should have been there sooner. And again the people we see winning today, why are they winning?[00:02:12] Because they started that increased investments so much sooner. So, you know, for listeners who didn't catch that part one discussion that we're, we're giving you the quick 50 cent tour right now. Go back, listen to season one, episode six, get caught up and then come back here for the deep dive into the three new topics. [00:02:29] Casey Golden: Yeah, open your pocket book and we'll be here waiting for you.[00:02:33] Ricardo Belmar: Totally. Totally. We want to be sure and get those extra downloads on the pod too. So be sure and give that one a listen and come back. And if you missed any other episodes, boy, this is a great time to get caught up too. So you don't miss anything. [00:02:44] Casey Golden: Maybe we should let everyone know what the deep dive topics are for this episode.[00:02:50] Ricardo Belmar: I suppose it's best not to keep it a surprise, right? [00:02:53] Casey Golden: Not unless it's a handbag or a plane ticket, but okay. So this way we go deep on three amazing topics, 5g, beyond a marketing campaign, internet of things also known as IOT. And of course Trevor's favorite computer vision.[00:03:12] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. That's right. I am excited and just dying with anticipation. So let's jump into the clubhouse discussion and then we'll come back, wrap things up. Maybe we'll give some extra thoughts on those topics that we didn't get to in the clubhouse session[00:03:25] Casey Golden: Sounds good. Ricardo. Let's listen to the retail Avengers versus the trials of digital transformation and innovation. [00:03:36] Clubhouse Session[00:03:36] Ricardo Belmar: welcome everyone to the retail razor room today. Thanks for joining us. And we're going to talk about the future of digital transformation and innovation. Zeroing in on three areas of interest, 5g, internet of things, and computer vision. I'm going to let the other speakers introduce themselves here.[00:03:53] Casey, why don't you kick us off? [00:03:54] Casey Golden: Hi there. Casey golden, I'm the founder of Lux lock a retail experience platform. And I've spent a career in the fashion and enterprise supply chain side of the business. Pretty much you name it. I've had to deal with the technology that I'm supposed to use to deal with it.[00:04:14] So I'm looking forward to always being a part of our digital transformation conversations. There's a lot going on and like to contribute where I can. [00:04:22] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Thanks Casey. Shish. [00:04:24] Shish Shridhar: Good afternoon. I'm the retail lead with Microsoft for startups and I've worked with retail tech, startups, B2B retail, tech startups, and building out a portfolio of innovative, disruptive startups being in Microsoft for 24 years, really working in the retail industry for about 15 of those 24.[00:04:45] And I'm also focused on AI IOT. So this conversation today is very interesting for me and looking forward to it. Thank you. [00:04:55] Ricardo Belmar: All right, Trevor. [00:04:56] Trevor Sumner: Hey everybody. My name is Trevor Sumner. I'm the CEO at perch. We do interactive retail displays and touchscreens at retail.[00:05:03] What makes them cool is we use computer vision to detect what products people are touching at the shelf and respond with digital media, the moment that they touch it. So it's like minority report really interactive and kind of contextual commerce. And so really excited about this topic today.[00:05:22] Ricardo Belmar: All right. And I'm Ricardo Belmar host of the retail razor club here on clubhouse. Also have spent the better part of the last couple of decades in the retail tech space, working with retailers, advising them on how to make the best investments in retail technology. Currently at Microsoft as a senior partner marketing advisor for retail.[00:05:42] And let's go ahead and get things started. So quick summary on last week's session, this is sort of a continuation of our last room here. Where last week we talked more about broadly where digital transformation is headed, how that's fueling innovation in retail and retail tech. We talked about how retailers that are very much embracing the idea of digital transformation and digital innovation are the ones who are succeeding and winning.[00:06:10] There's no doubt it continues to hold true that the retailers that wisely invest in the right technologies in ways that support their business and customers, not just for the sake of technology are the ones doing the best.[00:06:23] And we also talked about where new investments are going to be coming from in various different areas in retail tech and fuel retail spend. Where IT groups and retailers are going to focus on that and which groups outside of IT even were going to look at different investment areas. And then we also talked a little bit about where retail tech startups are coming from, how they're seeking investment.[00:06:45] And the fact that retailers themselves are starting to take on investment in those tech startups and how that's going to have an impact over the next few years in retail. So with that this week, we're going to narrow in on a few key areas that we touched on last week, but that we have previously talked a little bit about, but not really dove in deeply yet in, in this group.[00:07:06] Computer Vision[00:07:06] Ricardo Belmar: And since Trevor, you mentioned it, at the end there around computer vision. Why don't we start with that one? And let me just ask us some somewhat open question to the other speakers here on the panel, where do you see the most impact today with computer vision in retail, and where do you think that impact is going to be reflected and say by 2025?[00:07:26] And how do you think it's going to change? Let's kick off the discussion with that?[00:07:29] Trevor Sumner: I think, I think, you know, generally like the most like most technologies, it starts with basics, right? And so I think computer vision is really interesting in, in being able to understand the physical world and translate it into information that can be leveraged, optimized in interesting ways.[00:07:49] And right now I think that a majority of it is looking at planagram enforcement, it's looking for out of stocks on inventory, things where they're cost centers to where there can be, basic optimizations to make things more efficient. Some of it is in, warehousing and in the back office inventory management there.[00:08:11] But just looking at what's what's on the shelves, what's not on the shelves knowing what needs to be refreshed, et cetera. I advise a company called cooler group that does a little cameras that are attached into cooler doors that can take a look at what's in it because often, the coolers at a seven 11 are actually refreshed by the brand like a Pepsi or Coke.[00:08:30] And so now they know which stores they actually have to go to and which ones they don't and can make their operations much more efficient. So that's where I think it starts, there are some basic, retail, analytics and retail next, and other people who are looking at traffic flow.[00:08:43] But it's really basic. And I think it's going to get really interesting when you get granular down to the product level, but that's where I think kind of the base starting is. And we can talk a little bit about some of the exciting areas of where it's going.[00:08:54] Shish Shridhar: I can think from a vision perspective. Yeah. Trevor covered everything that's going on. And the use cases are growing all the time. I've seen some interesting use cases as well when it comes to vision. So the most common is something that Trevor pointed out, which is the on-shelf availability, the planogramming, and, and really determining where, whether it is in compliance.[00:09:19] And then. The main part of what Travis is doing, which is engaging the customer through, through video. And there's another company that I work with called cooler screens. There's also presenting media content on the cooler doors based on who is engaging with it. And all of that. In addition to that, the other interesting scenarios that I've seen popping up in addition to loss prevention is fresh food where video is being used to determine the freshness of food though there's another sensor at play that I've seen being used in addition to video and sort of augmented, and those are smell sensors. There is a company I'm working with out of Canada called Stratusint, and that is using smell sensors, and they train their models for different types of food for greens and others, to really determine what's the smell like when it is about to get spoiled.[00:10:14] And then they hook it up to dynamic pricing system so that when it's fresh food, they can start dropping the price and driving promotions and things like that. So that there is a reduction of food wastage. So that's sort of an interesting use case that combines video and smell sensing.[00:10:32] The other aspect of course, is in, within the store itself, that behavioral analysis of, of the customers where exactly are people moving around, which are the busy parts of the store at what time of day, and is a busy what's the demographics, is it you know, 20 year olds, 20 year old males females, it, it analyzes that information to get a better understanding of the store layout and, and where exactly the fast moving items are conversion as well, based on where people go to.[00:11:04] And is there a conversion in those areas? So there's some interesting insights that, that companies are driving, just using video analytics which is super interesting. [00:11:14] Trevor Sumner: Yeah. That's a common one with looking at the demographics for video delivery and cooler screens.[00:11:19] Which raised, I think just raised $80 million is doing some cool things and, a bunch of companies quividi and mobilize and others who are basically using demographics to determine , what to put on digital screens. But to your point, that the other way this is going is, you know, a lot of retailers are looking at their retail spaces as advertising networks and putting up large digital signage networks and they're selling that right now on a here's what my traffic is at this specific time in this type of store by demographics. So you can target by demographic, but where they're missing right now, and it's having a good conversation about this is that's not how media people want to buy on a CPM or, Hey, you want to reach, you know, 30 to 35 year olds or whatever it is that they want to know more kind of on the cost per interaction and verified impression side.[00:12:09] And so that's a little bit of the frontier about, where it is right now, which is overall kind of demographics and CPM detection to be able to do much more kind of verified interactivity, verified engagement and kind of more CPC metrics. And I think that's gonna once you get there, you will see, like, if you look at it, 1% of digital media spend happens where 85% of transactions occur in store.[00:12:39] So, you know, like that is going to be a major shift when they can crack that code and provide people, the data attribution that they need. [00:12:46] Shish Shridhar: Yep. And the, the other scenario that I failed to mention is the live streaming aspect, which is gaining a lot of traction. And there's multiple scenarios where livestream shopping is becoming a big part of brick and mortar retail where, it's either the store associates or personal shoppers, really driving that engagement and enabling the video to be shoppable.[00:13:12] And that's again, another really interesting area where edge AI comes in, where the video streams you can detect, what products they're looking at and be able to based on, on what it is detecting. You're able to add it to your cart and, be able to buy directly from video. And I think that's a really interesting area that's growing s growing [00:13:31] Ricardo Belmar: so we've got a lot of good examples there from shoppable video to traffic analytics. I like the point Trevor raised about turning your store and treating it like media as relates to digital signage networks and how we can leverage video analytics and understanding the demographics of customers to know how to target content.[00:13:52] I think that's something that will be really interesting as that develops. And then we also had an example, which was actually one of the first ones I was thinking of as well, that Shish brought up around analyzing store shelves particularly in, in grocery where I've seen a number of examples lately.[00:14:08] Oftentimes coupled with robotics, which I didn't list that as one of the key elements here, but we've seen a lot of use cases for grocery, with robotics or the robot leveraging computer vision and shelf analysis. Well, moving down the aisle to understand where they're empty spots that need to be replenished quickly and kind of helping to alleviate some of the more tedious functions in running the store and having associates just check for things that are running low and restocking, but now having some added intelligence in advance to know where exactly do I need to replenish things. So there, there are things we can see coming that help both from a store operations side of the house to just general experience factors around the signage and around content that's being placed in front of customers, as well as analyzing effectiveness of that through computer vision from video analytics and video analytics, I think is also interesting because I've seen that that's been around for a few years now.[00:15:02] I think even before we started really associating that with computer vision, a number of the analytics vendors started promoting video analytics, verge of basic traffic analysis in your store, understanding hot zones in the store and looking at those traffic patterns to kind of help you make decisions around where to place products in the store, where you might want to make changes based on what's most attractive.[00:15:24] And what's the most common path through the store. In fact cause you to rearrange fixtures in the store to accommodate that. So I think there are a number of really interesting use cases there. I want to come back to a couple of areas here that I think were the most interesting. One is specific to the digital signage and content placement that you mentioned Trevor.[00:15:44] So I I've been, dealing with digital signage for a long time and lots of different flavors. And I always remember, we'd have years where people would declare it. This is going to be the year of digital signage where every retail store is going to start peppering their, their fixtures and displays and walls with screens to get so much available content that's out there and leverage that in the store at the place of purchase.[00:16:08] And I'll say one of the things that I always found was the most challenging for the majority of retailers in that scenario was actually getting the content for the store, which maybe sounds a little counterintuitive, but I found that with most retailers, the issue was refreshing the content and making enough of a volume of content available so that if you did want to take advantage of the more clever things where you rely on let's say you want to rely on the video analytics to tell you which content to place on what screen, based on the demographics.[00:16:39] So, or customer information you have of who's actually in your store. It takes a lot of content to be available. Even if that content may not get shown on the screen, you need to have access to a significant enough amount of content to make this interesting and to get the right ROI on it. And in the past my experience, and I'd be curious, Trevor if you've seen similar or Shish if, you've seen similar as well. You know, a lot of retailers just weren't prepared for that volume of content. I think there was an assumption that if I had content on my YouTube channel, I just reuse that. Or if I had advertising content that I'd use for TV spots or other out-of-home video that I leveraged that, but it might not necessarily be the right content at the right moment in that customer journey when people are walking past the screen.[00:17:24] Shish Shridhar: So one of the areas that I'm kind of seeing it in a lot of uptake and interest in is really retailers trying to monetize that opportunity where shelf edge, for example, the shelf edge video that Kroger experimented with some time ago. And there's other companies like SES imagotag , that's also working on where, what they're really doing is they have a platform in the background that enabled suppliers to bid based on the insights that is being gathered in the store the insights of behavioral data where exactly do people dwell?[00:18:00] What are they looking at? What time of day what's the demographics and using that information. And feeding it back to suppliers so that they can bid for specific content to be displayed in specific areas at specific times. I think that is the area that there is a lot of movement in, and a lot of retailers are looking at this as an opportunity to monetize and have suppliers really use their content and push it down.[00:18:30] And then this is based on, the insights that is gathered in the store. And that's something that I I'm seeing a lot of. And I think that's going to grow. [00:18:38] Thank you. [00:18:39] Trevor Sumner: Yeah. think it's interesting because traditionally, this has been hard, like a lot of digital signage systems. You were supposed to go with a USB and update the content and that's crazy.[00:18:49] Right. And so internet connectivity is starting to be solved. You have Walgreens installing 5g in 9,000 stores. You know, we're seeing store wifi networks being updated and to, to Shish's' point that, we're moving towards a programmatic model. And you know, the part of the problem was they didn't go big enough.[00:19:09] Right. And so you didn't have the network of inventory, it's like, I think of these programmatic networks is like banner ad networks for a variety of reasons. I think this, type of programmatic buys meant to be, you know, interruptive media and much more promotional based like a banner ad.[00:19:25] But you need a big network so that you have people to bid on it, and then you need this attribution, which they also didn't have. They said, okay, well, I've got this many people in store. Why don't you advertise it to them? Like, well, what are the demographics? Okay. I lit up the advertising, what are my what's my sales stuff look like, oh, you won't share sales data with me.[00:19:42] Like, how am I supposed to buy this stuff? Went on Facebook or Instagram or Google. I can measure exactly demographics, target very finely, look at clicks, which had conversion rates and have all that data. I can't. Yeah, go back to a world where, I know my advertising is working on half, but I don't know which half kind of thing.[00:20:01] So I think that that's fundamentally changing. And I think underlying that is that kind of conductivity and people making big budgets. Like I think, you know, I was talking to somebody that, that like Kroger Kroger is hiring like 60 ad salespeople. So if you're asking me like, when is that happening?[00:20:19] It's this world happening it's happening right now. Right. That Kroger's got this, you know, side company called 84 51 doing analytics video, that kind of stuff. Walmarts media network is now extending into store CVS put out an RFP to you know, 500, 800 stores with huge digital signage networks.[00:20:38] So I think it's happening now. And, you know, over the course of the next year, you're going to see this because. It's a huge opportunity. Again, you know, only 1% of digital media spend is happens in store where 85% of transactions occur. I just think retailers need to continue to evolve their offerings, share data, so that you can look at demographic targeting, verifying interaction, some of the stuff that cooler screens as doing, and then also provide sales data.[00:21:08] Like if you spent, what is my return on ad spend? Like, you need to answer that question or you're not going to get the ad dollars. And if you expect it just to come from trade dollars, I think you're missing out on the pie of, of, of where the media spend is. [00:21:21] Casey Golden: I completely agree. I really see a lot of this democratizing data and relief.[00:21:29] A lot of the handcuffs that have been on it. I think it's going to be shared much more freely because it's going to be easier to get. And you're either a good partner or you're not. [00:21:39] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I agree. I think there's a key point there about being a good partner. If you think about what the brands for the products that you have in the store are used to experiencing, I think you've hit on the right point there where those brands are used to having access to that data.[00:21:53] So they can calculate that return on ad spend. They know exactly whether this particular ad spend was the one that helped you make a denser and make, make. On purchases. They want to know that they don't want to just take, essentially take it on, on faith that yeah. I spent this money with you as a retailer and you showed an increase in sales, but do I even really know if it was sales that I care about because it was my product versus others in the category.[00:22:17] I think that's important to have the granularity that you can talk back to your partners and share that information with them is going to be critical. And that's, what's going to help these things grow and expand. I would say that if we kind of look out a few years into this, what does, what does it look like?[00:22:33] You know, you have a combination of much more intelligence around signage for content display, but it beyond just signage. I think if we think of computer vision and this maybe will help us kind of shift into a discussion on a more internet of things, type of things more of a. Three-dimensional capability, which I know Trevor's going to jump in here and tell me more about in a moment, but you know, the ability to actually interact with the merchandise in a way that also triggers new content on surrounding displays and tandem between sensors and computer vision, all helping to improve that experience for the customer.[00:23:08] But at the same time generating the kind of data that brands are expecting to see for those products that they might get in other mediums, like an social, for example, where, you know, they'll know things, basic things like click-throughs I'll know, impressions, they'll know, viewing Tom, if it was a video, if you have a content that's going in a store and it's, you have multiple products in the category and a display case, of course, each individual brand is going to want to know, well, which product did the customer stand there looking at the longest? Was it mine? Was it a competitive product and the category? Which one did they pick up? How long did they hold it, did that. Was that was that followed by a sale. Those are the kinds of data points they're going to want to know which in other digital marketing mediums, you know, all of this data is there today.[00:23:52] Internet of Things[00:23:52] Ricardo Belmar: And it's been missing, in that store format. And these are areas that, there's so much room to free that data and make it more accessible to both the retailer and the brands to act on. I think there's, there's a significant, powerful capability that that's coming there and you can start to see it now, but I think we're going to see this much more ubiquitously in the years to come.[00:24:11] So let's take advantage of this and kind of shift a little bit more into things like sensors and other internet of things. A couple of the examples we talked about have already touched on this. I'm going to circle back to grocery cause that's one of my favorite topics here and examples with shelf sensors that help you understand when you need to replenish that shelf.[00:24:31] Okay. Sensors that help you understand the temperature in your cooler cases? You know, my, one of my favorite examples are grocers who are leveraging these sensors and coolers, and then having robotics go up and down the aisle and capture the, those data points, send them out so that we don't need to waste any employee's time with having to run around with the temperature sensor to actually check those times.[00:24:53] You can do thousands of these temp checks throughout the day, and know exactly where you may have a problem coming up. You know, exactly if you're going to need maintenance, you know, exactly. If it was going to be an issue with product safety without having to ask people to repeatedly, go out there and take on this tedious task.[00:25:08] So there's operational benefits of sensor type devices like this. Then there are things that are more experience driven and display cases shelf counts. We've heard a couple of these examples. Shish, Trevor you've both mentioned some. When it comes to leveraging the data generated by these sensors, I can see an example where, store associates who are engaged with the customer in a more personal one-on-one experience might be able to leverage data, being generated by sensors throughout the store. So that when someone says, you know, do we have something it's immediately available to them? And they know exactly where it is in the store, for example, without having to search or find it.[00:25:46] We've seen some past examples of places where a customer in a fitting room, for example, realizes, oh, I need a different size of this particular merchandise. I have to wait until I talk to someone that, to tell them that I need help finding that. But if you have the right sensors in the fitting room and the right tags on the merchandise, you know exactly what merchandise is there, and you can offer an experience to the customer to, for example, tap on a screen or tap on their own device that sends a message to someone else in the store that says exactly what it is they need.[00:26:13] And they can just bring it over to them. And I think that would bring a new level of in store personalization for that, that we've seen examples of this, but it hasn't quite gone mainstream. And I think that's something that's yet to come. But , I'll put it out to everybody else on the panel or some other examples where you see this area of IOT and then sensor technology, helping to improve that in store experience.[00:26:35] Shish Shridhar: A couple of things that I, I I'm fascinated about is also the sensors driving automation. And one of them is, you know, the sensors that are detecting the shelves looking at availability of products or lack of availability of products, and then kicking off a process either as a notification to store associates, to replenish or kicking off a reorder process in the back end.[00:27:00] So those kinds of automations are interesting. In addition, also video analytics that notices a spill in a particular aisle then creates a task automatically for a store associate or an employee to be able to, to be aware of what's going on in the store. Whether it is assistance needed for a customer based on behavioral data, whether it is detecting a potential fraud and it's it's notifying people.[00:27:29] So that kind of an automation is, is kind of fascinating where the sensors, the noxious detecting information, but it kicking off processes and book flows in the background. And, and that's an interesting area that, that, that is happening. The other part of it is the, the range of senses. As I mentioned earlier, where for us aunts on shelf availability, there's weight sensors, there's video analytics.[00:27:56] And then there is other kinds of sensing as well to detect whether with a product is going bad. Like for example, I mentioned smell sensors. So those are getting to be interesting as well, where there's a lot of sensors in place for detecting what's going on in store. The, the other one that I think is fascinating is sensors that bring in the experiences or what happens online into the store.[00:28:24] A good example of that is retargeting where as a shopper may have done a search online using their account, gone to, you know, the online store and then done a search picked a product, but not actually bought it. Then when they walk into the store with a mobile device, it automatically detects that they've walked in and could potentially do a retarget or promo and so on.[00:28:49] It also can act on dwell times. It knows that I have dwelled in front of a product. It indicates that I've got interested in the product, but I've not bought the product so that information can be acted on as well. When in the store or online that retargeting from store to online. And the other way around is sort of interesting areas that, that sensors come into play.[00:29:13] Thank you.[00:29:17] Trevor Sumner: Yeah. And I think as you look towards the future, right now, people have been talking about facial recognition as part of that identity closed, looping the identity from online to in store. And so, you know, we'll see how far we go down that and some of the privacy concerns or whether we'll tolerate these things, but that's why I thought, the whole face scan technology for payments was really interesting is because, you know, that's basically creating that facial ID library, which can then be used throughout the store. So I think some of that stuff, as you look at it is really a Trojan horse. And you know, one of the things I look at with all of these is just like, who is doing these clever things to capture data for computer vision. So when, for example, like we talked a little bit about identifying products from pictures, so you can do or video, so you can do social selling, right?[00:30:04] So live shoppable videos. Well, where do you get the product imagery, right? Because you can hold the product and lots of different ways in a video, et cetera, et cetera. Well, what target does is, you know, during the, in the checkout counter when you scan the product, it has, it has cameras.[00:30:19] And so you, you, you, you know, scan the product at lots of different angles, you know, just as people. And they take pictures of it. And then when they get the UPC code that they say, okay, all right, great. This is pro products to XYZ, 12 ounce that that's at the top and they have, you know, 50, a hundred pictures of that product, every scan.[00:30:39] And so they have an immense fiber library of images of a product in every different direction. And it's a clever way to build a product recognition database. Right. And so, you know, at the same way that facial scanning for payment is a clever way to create facial identity, you know, a database. And so then when I look at all these technologies that are being adopted and when I think about Walmart giving away, you know, 700,000 devices to, to, to their employees, I always think, okay, what new access to data are these guys building and leveraging for the future.[00:31:16] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's a good point about the, as I like to think of it, the volume of data that we're now generating by using these technologies and what are we going to do with that data, who's going to get access to it. And how will they be able to take advantage of it in a, in a positive way? [00:31:30] Casey Golden: think a lot of the computer vision and these types of technologies going in store, we'll be able to fill in a lot of gaps and add context to digital data that we've been sitting on.[00:31:42] It'll be a lot easier to understand unconventional a recommendation like building out unconventional recommendation engines and really understanding how people are really shopping in store to improve the way that items are merchandised and assorted or even planned for online.[00:32:05] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. That's another good point on the data aspects of it as well. Let me go back to, you know, again, so keeping this in the context of IOT and sensors, that we also just talked about computer vision, you know, the data piece reflects on all of these, especially around the volume of data, as well as your, where it's being used, how it's being used.[00:32:26] 5G[00:32:26] Ricardo Belmar: let's kind of connect this to the communications mean that that's going to become available both to the store and to other locations because of 5g. I'm going to kind of, I want to start with you Trevor, cause I know you've talked quite a bit and this was one of your predictions. If I recall at the beginning of the year as what was going to happen and what 5g would open.[00:32:44] Within retail for this year. So I'd like to get your thoughts on how you see 5g kind of connecting the dots here and helping us move all this data around to where it needs to be. [00:32:53] Trevor Sumner: Yeah. I mean, the I in IOT is connectivity, right? It's connectivity to the internet. And you know, it's just amazing how bad store and vendor wifi is.[00:33:03] I mean, it's, it's, it's horrible. Right? And they changed the password. They block ports, they do all these other things. It's not evenly distributed in store. They just didn't do a good job with it. And 5g promises to be able to solve this through, greater throughput, faster connectivity, the latency on a connection is much, much lower and then the devices can talk to each other.[00:33:27] And so you can have really dense networks , of nodes, of devices and sensors and all these things kind of operating independently on very kind of low cost hardware. And so, the IDC projects that , you'll see about a 10 X increase in IOT in retail in the next four years. And like, this is happening now, right?[00:33:48] Like Walmart, I think is processing 5 billion IOT messages every single day. And so people are doing it now, and this is where you're seeing like Walgreens implementing 5g across 9,000 stores. And, and what they're saying is there all these things that we talked about, right. They want inventory scanning robots, planagram enforcement, robots.[00:34:08] They want interactive displays. They want all this type of stuff. And the reality is it's the dirty little secret about why this has been such a difficult business is all the operational low-level stuff that can go wrong. And it's especially hard when you don't have connectivity and you don't have visibility into what's going on.[00:34:29] So I think it's just as a super core tenant to be able to network all these devices with lower cost hardware, much more reliable ubiquitous throughout the store. And it'll make engineering and development and deployment much less expensive, which then opens up a new suite of applications like, , for perch, we started off like doing these high-end displays for like Joe Malone, but our fastest growing customer segment right now is in grocery because we've got the price point to a place where it made sense. And, part of that is looking at the, hardware technologies and some clever things we've done around the financing and other things. But part of it is just the underlying technologies enabling, shifts in cost structure that make a lot of sense. [00:35:15] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I think that's a good point.[00:35:17] And to your point about the the wifi, I've always been saying to retailers in the industry, you know, the only thing worse than no wifi in a store is bad wifi, because it's even more frustrating than when you can't get connected, the fact that you get connected, but then it's terrible makes the experience a hundred times worse.[00:35:35] Trevor Sumner: Yeah, totally. And, because of that, I shipped with a 4g router with every single one of our Perch units, and that adds, 200, $250 in cost per unit that adds somewhere between five and $25 per month. So that's, another 60 to $300 on an annual basis.[00:35:56] And so like that, that just pushes you off into too expensive territory for a bunch of stuff, as opposed to here's the CPU that speaks 5g right out of the bat. I don't have to buy any of that networking stuff and I don't have to pay Verizon or, Vodafone or whoever you're using. And all of a sudden, you're shaving 25% off my cost basis and operating this.[00:36:18] I mean, that's, that's solid amount, but what that really does is it opens up whole new tiers of applications that make this kind of sensor enabled future possible. [00:36:29] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. That's a good point on a cost difference there. And then I think I'll even throw in there's some other advantages that will hopefully get opened up as the 5g carrier define what more detail specific services that make sense for retailers. You know, there are capabilities in 5g that lets you carve out dedicated capacity within a channel. So for example, a retailer could say, I want to have some dedicated connectivity between a set of stores and maybe a fulfillment center distribution center, or maybe I want to have a distinct channel back to a supplier for specific things or, you know, those digital signage media networks we talked about earlier.[00:37:07] If I want to keep that separate such that it doesn't interfere with other store traffic which in the past has always produced the strangest of problems. I can't even begin to count how many different retailers I've worked with where fundamental performance issues in the store just came down to one set of technology interfering on the communications link with other technologies, all fighting for the same capacity. And nobody really realized that these things needed to have just some dedicated carved out capacity. So 5g should allow for some of these new models to, to appear, to let things function a little bit smoother with dedicated capacity and space for all the different things going on in the store to kind of play nicely together and share in that space, which is something that you know, I remember when 4g started, you know, that was supposed to be one of the promises, but I think we quickly learned that it just wants to really have the strength to do that in store compared to building a solid wifi network instead.[00:38:03] Casey Golden: A hundred percent. Trevor really said it well with not having our stores with premium wifi. It's one thing to be able to make a phone call or look something up on the internet.[00:38:14] But when we get to engage with more AR applications and hologram tech and just all the types of immersive technologies that will be able to be powered onsite it could get really interesting and really innovative as long as these systems can, can actually run. [00:38:32] Trevor Sumner: Yeah. I'll give another example, right?[00:38:34] It's like, we're talking a lot about computer vision. Well, where does the vision processing happen? If you can't transmit video streams over, a significant sized internet pipe to some central location, you have to do it locally, which means that you have really powerful CPU's that cost money, right?[00:38:53] So, our Perch CPU's costs, like a media players, 400, 500, $600, and they're capable of doing, a reasonable amount of vision processing. Now, if you can just communicate that video stream to some central server to be processed afterwards now at zero and not zero, but near zero.[00:39:10] And so, it's tremendous what, again, the, challenge has been the costs, the maintenance, the, the way that these things break down, the more you can make them dumb sensors that can communicate through thick pipes to centralize processing. That's aware of all the sensors and looking at how it's not just a video from one view, but it's video from multiple views. You can do more intelligent computer vision and analysis and do that centrally once that model takes hold. It's just it's an exponential shift in computing power and, and intelligence and also an exponential shift, lower income.[00:39:49] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And then just thinking more about, this video example, what better model than if you could take all of these devices and systems generating these video streams, especially for example, if we're talking about live streaming out of the store, what better model than to try to push that out over 5g and not even have it on the store network at all?[00:40:08] Not have it go over the wifi, not to have it go over the same store network. That's driving all your POS transactions, but separate it and have it go out of her 5g on a low latency systems so that it gets good performance to all the people watching that video. Likewise, if it's sensor-based generating this, these video files or video streams and it, because it's shelf technology, that's looking for gaps for replenishment. You want accuracy. And the best way you're going to get accuracy is to have reliable high capacity connectivity for that. So I think those are all good models that really speak to what we can hope to accomplish here with 5g. [00:40:40] I would, put the stake in the ground now that says, if we're talking 2025, right. That's for three years out, we're going to see 5g quite widespread across stores everywhere in one form or another, even if it's just doing, and I'll put just in air quotes, because it's not like it's an insignificance activity, but even if it's just supporting live streaming, I think that's going to be a significant factor just right there to help facilitate the adoption of that technology.[00:41:06] So I would even put it into those terms where I think this is what you were saying, Trevor is, is you reduce the cost to simpler devices that have that connectivity built in you're lowering that cost basis and making it easier to adopt these new technologies in the store and make it more ubiquitous across the entire brands store fleet.[00:41:23] So this might be a good point to pause and I'll, ask, if anyone in our audience has a question we've taken a trip across computer vision IOT. We had some digital signage sprinkled in there and we've ended up at 5g. I'm curious if anyone in our audience has some questions.[00:41:38] Questions[00:41:38] Ricardo Belmar: I think I see a hand raised there.[00:41:41] All right, Jamie. Welcome to the stage.[00:41:42] Jamie Tenser: Well, hello, greetings. This is a great conversation. I really want to compliment every one of the speakers today, as it brings together some ideas that I've been thinking about for a long time. My, my real question, I guess right now is how inextricable are in-store media and in store sensing, we've tended to look at them as sort of separate areas of pursuit.[00:42:06] Is it really converging into one thing? And I wonder what the panelists think about that. [00:42:11] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, that's a great question. You're really getting at what point is the store really starting to look like pure media, right? [00:42:18] Jamie Tenser: Well, yeah. And, if it's all right, I'll say that one of the statements I repeated for years is what I called the retail media ecology principle that the store is a communications environment for brand messages. That's on the front page of my website. So I'm a believer going in, but it does feel like the forces are converging as several people said today.[00:42:42] So I'll shut up and I'm very curious what the smart folks have to say about it.[00:42:46] Trevor Sumner: Yeah, I mean, look, I think it goes back to this, people don't want to put just straight digital signage, flashy texts that says maybe it's Maybelline, maybe it's Maybelline, maybe it's Maybelline. It doesn't really help.[00:42:57] it doesn't help the shopper because it's not contextual and it also doesn't help the brand because they can't measure it. They don't know if it's working or not. And so sensors allow both you to be more intelligent and providing the right message at the right time and also to be able to attribute, you know, kind of action.[00:43:14] So one of the things that we're doing is using computer vision to detect when somebody takes a product away from the shelf. So if the retailer doesn't want to share store level sales data with you, you don't need it. . Like somebody picked up, you know, the tide package and they walked away with it.[00:43:30] So let's just say, let's call that a sale because 90% of the time it is, and we can say, you know, does that, does that work based upon, kind of the metrics that you're looking at? I mean, we're for example, we just made a major launch with Purina at Meyer supermarkets at two hundred stores.[00:43:45] And, we're getting all this kind of interesting data, but one of the most interesting pieces of data to me is like, I can actually price this on a cost per click basis. If clicking on a product is the same as picking up a product in store. And it's one third that of Facebook. And it's like, oh, well, if media buyers start looking at this and be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what do you mean one third?[00:44:04] Like maybe we need to do a lot more of this. Right. But until you start putting it into terms that people like $8 CPM, $20 CPM dollars CPM, a couple who cares about a CPM, did it, did people take the action? And that's what people need to see to really open this up. And that's kind of the hope of IOT. [00:44:23] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.[00:44:23] I think I would add to what Trevor said that really what we're looking at here is, is it an awareness issue we're trying to address with media in the store or is it more an impact on conversion? And I think Trevor, you gave some really good examples there where, if you're just, popping up that Maybelline message, that's just trying to get awareness, right? That's trying to get your attention to say, Hey, I'm here. But if we think about the customer journey, what particular customer went through that they got to this store, especially where we are now, we know that those customer journeys have changed because of the pandemic.[00:44:53] We know that more often than not now they're starting as a digital journey and ending up in the store, ultimately converting. So if we take that as our premise and to Trevor's point, what value is it to have content that shows up in some form of media in the store, that's just designed to get your attention?[00:45:13] And just get you to notice. I already know it's there but if I came to the store, then in this example, my journey has brought me here because there's some reason I wasn't ready to make this purchase. When I started researching it online, I want to see it. I want to touch it. I want to see, I might want to compare it to other products in the same category that I know the store might have five different options of.[00:45:34] And because of that, if suddenly now I see some additional added value content that gives me meaningful information about the product and that's leading into a conversion. And to Trevor's point, I agree completely with this. Now it's measurable. Now I know that that media had an impact because if I know that this is in front of a display that has multiple products and there's sensors that tell me exactly which product the customer picked up and I displayed some form of content.[00:45:59] And then later I know that product was purchased by this customer. I can map that direct impact and that's to me as much more meaningful than, than the traditional, Hey, look at me. I'm here kind of promotional material.[00:46:11] Casey Golden: A hundred percent. I mean, I went to Ikea last weekend and there was a huge screen in front of the staircase on the second floor. And it was an ad. And obviously I'm looking for something because I'm walking up to the screen. I'm like, okay, nothing happens when you touch it. It was an ad for Ikea, not a product, but Ikea I'm like, I'm already here.[00:46:36] Can you show me a map? And that adds value. Do anything, something that adds value to my journey because obviously I've already made it into Ikea. So I don't need an advertisement that shopping at Ikea is great. [00:46:49] Ricardo Belmar: You need something much more specific. Yeah. [00:46:52] Casey Golden: But it would have been nice to see something else. Maybe even something that was upstairs since I'm at the bottom of the staircase.[00:47:01] Trevor Sumner: Yeah. I mean, the way I think about shopping is it about, it's fundamentally about connecting people and products and stores and departments are all kind of like abstractions and collections of this idea, but really what needs to happen is understand the interactions at a people and products level and, you talk about the journey starting online.[00:47:20] It's like, part of it is because that's the first measurable place, right? I think there's plenty of interactions of people walking. If you've walked down a supermarket aisle, you've probably seen a hundred thousand products in the cleaning goods category and you don't even register which ones you've kind of, like subconsciously you do, but , it's not measurable.[00:47:42] And so, you gotta be able to measure. Measure what people are interacting with. And so that's why fundamentally like at perch, we're really focused on that being the really centered the universe. Like those, those people product connection.[00:47:55] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. I'll all good points out. Shish did you have something you wanted to add on this one.[00:47:59] Shish Shridhar: I can thank the, you know, the way that all the systems across the store are going is the becoming in a connected systems. So the sensors really detecting behavioral information within the store and combining it with your behavioral data, if that is available outside, online, and then making recommendations and real time just-in-time is really the direction we're going.[00:48:25] And that's where the, the signage within the store kind of interacts and works in tandem with the sensors and the data and this combined with inference models. So when we kind of combine the data, there'll be a collecting from external sources, the sensors that is collecting behavioral data within the store and.[00:48:50] Applying AI models to it, to be able to determine in time, what is the most relevant and personalized messaging that can be delivered to you? I think that's the direction we are really coming with, but that combination of iOT and AI. [00:49:05] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. That's also a good point that that there's data to be acting on in near real-time based on the situation.[00:49:11] And I think Casey's example Ikea was a good one where if you were, if you had a system that was taking in that data in the moment, then that's allowing you to make real time decisions on how to adjust the media offered to that customer for, for the particular scenario that they're in. And That to me is a pretty good step in the right direction for digital signage in particular.[00:49:34] I know plenty of older digital signage systems where the, it lacks this sort of intelligence and everything was pre-programmed, but pre-programmed for sort of a default environment where you did really take into account how that customer's visit is changing while they're there. And that's something that I think, you know, to, to your point, you know, if you have the right sensors, the right even if it could be computer vision based, it could just be an IOT sensor, you have the right technology components there.[00:49:59] You can act on the data in a more intelligent way.[00:50:01] Jamie Tenser: And just let me say, thank you for addressing my ideas. I have to sign off because they have something coming, but this is one of the most timely conversations I've been able to listen to. About retail innovation in a long time. I appreciate it. If in my hat to you all, thank you. [00:50:18] Ricardo Belmar: Any other questions from the audience at this time,[00:50:21] if not, I'm going to turn to my fellow speakers today. Casey, any final thoughts [00:50:26] Casey Golden: final thoughts is just keep it going every single step forward and new piece of technology implemented, failed or successful as a step forward. [00:50:37] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Excellent Any final thoughts? [00:50:39] Shish Shridhar: Yeah, the right now we're seeing a lot of these solutions in silos. So the IOT and the AI and 5g, all of them coming together.[00:50:47] But I think what we are going towards is them becoming an entire ecosystem that integrates and does intertwines with each other communicating information one to the other. I think that's the direction we're going in. And that's my big takeaway. [00:51:02] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I agree with that. I think you're absolutely spot on, on that one that is typically, I think happens right in the, in the adoption cycle with these new technologies, you see them in very unique, specific use cases in silos.[00:51:14] And then when they start integrating with other new technologies, you really start to see the magic. Trevor, any final thoughts. [00:51:19] Trevor Sumner: Yeah, the only final thought I'd have I was going to say something cheesy. Like there is an I, an IOT, but but what's really, I think interesting to me is, is we're going to start to learn what actually really happens in retail stores.[00:51:31] And the reality is we don't know, and we have lots of theories, like like in planagram design, there's this notion that you want to put your products at eye level, because eye level is buy level, but you say, and we don't even know if it's true. The answer is it's sometimes true and we're actually starting to get data to show when it is true when it's not true.[00:51:49] And it's just suddenly people who've been doing planograms their entire life for like their entire careers. It's like this can't be right. And I'm like, yeah, it's right. It's just like, well, that changes everything. Right. And I think when we get this, these types of sensor technologies and this insights into what actually happens, what actually drives customer behaviors, how customers, actually get impressions or products before they go online. And what is the importance of that and the attribution to the sales cycle? I there's just so much that's going to change. And I think, the people who embrace data and think about data and share data with their partners, if you're a retailer sharing that data with your brand partners, they will spend more with you.[00:52:30] Your customers will spend more with you. You'll become a more valuable platform. And all of this becomes just kind of this reinforcing cycle. And, there's people investing very heavily in this and it's coming and it's exciting. So I'm going to leave into the weekend. Excited [00:52:50] Ricardo Belmar: here, here to that.[00:52:51] I'm with you on that one, Trevor. I think we are absolutely going to start to learn significant new insights from data gathered in store that, that you're right. We've always made assumptions as an industry. We've. I had expected behaviors that we think we know when all we ever had to look at was a final sales data from the point of sale.[00:53:11] And compared to the mountains of information we get on e-commerce and online, I think you're, you're spot on, on that one. We're going to, as each of these technologies gets adopted, we're going to find out some truly meaningful differences of what happens with customers in store that hopefully won't be too shocking, but hopefully we'll just validate a lot of things, but I'm sure there's going to be an equal amount of new things we see that are, are very unexpected that we're going to be able to take advantage of. [00:53:38] The risk to getting left behind is, is significant. I think at this point, and hopefully every retailer has either learned a lesson for themselves or observed it from others during the pandemic. And as we come out that the need for innovation is greater than ever because consumers are coming back to stores.[00:53:54] So, on that note we'll go ahead and thank everyone for sticking through the session with us. I hope you enjoyed today's discussion on future digital transformation, innovation, particularly around 5g IOT and computer vision. Thanks everyone. And have a great weekend coming up here. [00:54:11] Recap Discussion[00:54:11] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome back everyone. I hope you enjoyed our deep dive into computer vision, IOT, and 5G. [00:54:23] Casey Golden: Shish and Trevor are just phenomenal. I'm so lucky to actually be standing in the same room with them at Shop Talk. [00:54:29] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, it was [00:54:32] retail's big reunion. Yup. [00:54:34] Casey Golden: we ever going to really have five G[00:54:37] Ricardo Belmar: You mean other than a neat little symbol on your phone [00:54:40] Casey Golden: yeah.[00:54:41] Ricardo Belmar: that it'll actually do something for us? Yeah you know, I guess it's coming. It's coming. I mean, you know, we had some good ideas come up in the discussion there. Trevor and Shish brought up some good, good thoughts there on 5g. I have to admit when, during, I'll say peak hype over that, I remember hearing people talking about how retailers are just going to totally dismantle all their, all their store networks and just put everything on 5g. And I thought, you know, I'm not so sure about that. I think we're looking in the wrong place. And I think it's interesting that all the things we talked about around 5g in the clubhouse session, they were all new things. We're not talking about converting and replacing old activities and old concepts went into stores and how we move data around the retail business. We're talking about new things and I think that's what really, really matters. [00:55:26] Casey Golden: So does that mean, we won't get cell service in Bloomingdale's on 59th street.[00:55:32] Ricardo Belmar: Well, that remains to be seen. And maybe, I dunno, maybe you're making a good side argument there for better wifi, but I'm going to, I'm going to stay away from that wifi conversation. Don't get me started on, on bad retail, wifi. It's my number one, retail pet peeve is bad wifi. All right. So I'm going to put you on the spot now, Casey. I didn't warn you, but I'm doing it anyway of the three topics, 5g, IOT, and computer vision, which do you think is the most transformative for retail? [00:56:00] Casey Golden: Things that we can deploy now. That's what I like best.[00:56:04] Ricardo Belmar: That's a great answer. [00:56:07] Casey Golden: So I'm placing my bets on computer vision. It has an incredible potential to flow through the entire organization and not just a department. I think it's completely under utilized today. And fashion is a visual industry. Commerce is visual. How do we sell our products with video media? [00:56:27] Ricardo Belmar: Right. [00:56:27] Casey Golden: video content is at an all time high adoption rate.[00:56:31] I mean, it's finally normal. [00:56:33] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:56:34] Casey Golden: So I think, [00:56:35] Ricardo Belmar: that before. Yeah. [00:56:35] Casey Golden: Measuring and deciphering images and videos is still predominantly very human interpreting that. The success, what makes it a success? We're missing a lot of insights that computer vision can make a big impact. And I don't even think we know how big of an impact it can make because I just haven't seen it deployed strong enough.[00:56:57] Ricardo Belmar: early stages yeah,. It's [00:56:58] still the early stages. That's true. [00:56:59] Casey Golden: But just even for what is it. The ability to back channel data entry and tagging alone,[00:57:07] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:57:08] Casey Golden: that could be millions of additional data points on products that we've been selling for a decade.[00:57:14] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Good point. Good point. Yeah. . It, it all, it does always come back to data, right? It comes back to getting more, more data. Knowing more about your customer. [00:57:21] Casey Golden: You don't get a pass. Ricardo, where are you placing your bets?[00:57:24] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, I knew you'd ask me that. I knew you'd ask me that. So at the risk of being really cagey about this, and this may not come as a big shock, I'm also going to say it's computer vision, but more so as a means to an end, and you were kind of getting at it too. So here's what I mean. So for me, the 5g IOT, those are really enablers. They're going to enable. Yeah. Well, the thing is by either connecting them together in new ways, like we were just saying for 5g, new types of connectivity to do new things, that way, move data around or enabling a new way of gathering that data, which let's face that's what IOT is for.[00:57:57] Right. Where every use case we always talk about now, it seems for IOT, it's all about getting a new data set that a retailer can use for whatever purpose it is. It's inventory management, supply chain, you name it, but you know, computer vision, it takes those and it kind of fuels a new experience around it. So you're not just transforming the value of the data brought in by the other two. . Kinda got into that, right at the end of the clubhouse discussion, it was turning more into a little bit of a data discussion. We had that great question from Jamie Tenser that kind of brought that up. He connected the dots to retail media which, another favorite topic of ours on the show, retail media networks, and connected that with all three of these things and for me, computer vision, it's almost like it's the glue that puts all of these things together and builds an experience around it. So to me, that's what makes it the most transformative one, because it's all about more and more data for retailers to leverage, to learn more about customers and how they engage. [00:58:49] Casey Golden: A hundred percent, understanding the visual world can change the way we think and how we engage with literally every aspect\. I mean, we were consumed like, what is it? Seven hours a day. People are spending online. We're looking at, I mean, it changes the way we search how we discover new products, but it's going to change what we see, why we see it, how we process it.[00:59:11] And that frankly, it's, it's going to change the way that we do business.[00:59:15] Ricardo Belmar: At the end of the day, that's why we picked those three topics because they really are the ones if you take them together now that they're just going to change so much about how retail is done.[00:59:24] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, media is going to have a huge play with computer vision.[00:59:28] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. No doubt about it. No doubt about it. I'm thinking we're going to have to do another show later. Maybe more, just specific on, maybe retail media, maybe another one on, on retail data. But there's, there's some, there's some good discussions to be had there. All, all around. [00:59:40] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, we're creating a lot of new visual experiences. And so with these new visual experiences or AR, or gosh, amount of [00:59:50] Ricardo Belmar: AR is another one we should do. [00:59:51] Casey Golden: that the amount of information that could literally be pulled in from the way that people engage in the metaverse [00:59:58] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, That too.[01:00:00] I'm thinking Casey, that's the note we need to end on because if I let you keep going, you're going to create like 60 new episodes we're going to have to record in like no time to cover all this[01:00:08] Casey Golden: I I know! [01:00:09] Ricardo Belmar: And be even more work for us. [01:00:11] Casey Golden: how lucky are we? [01:00:12] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, [01:00:12] Casey Golden: Yeah, it is that time back to the other work, the real work. This is all the fun.[01:00:18] Ricardo Belmar: Right. [01:00:19] Casey Golden: that counts as work.[01:00:20] Clubhouse Thank You[01:00:20] Casey Golden: Well, before we close, I'd like to thank everyone who joined us on stage for this clubhouse sesh to talk innovation, transformation, and ask questions. A special shout out [01:00:30] Ricardo Belmar: a Jamie Tensor, principle VSN strategies and no stranger to the Retail Razor room on clubhouse. Thanks Jamie for that great question I mentioned earlier about tying our discussion to retail and media and how it all connects the dots between digital and physical together, which of course is a favorite topic of ours on the show.[01:00:48] And for those who didn't catch it, one of our top 10 predictions for 2022. [01:00:53] Casey Golden: Thank you Jamie. So Ricardo, that's a wrap. Kind of actually , always wanted to say that.[01:01:00] Ricardo Belmar: It is, and that brings us to a close. [01:01:04] Show Close[01:01:04] Casey Golden: If you enjoyed our show, please consider giving us a five star review on apple podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. Want to know more about what we talked about today? Take a look at the show notes for handy links and more deets.[01:01:20] I'm your cohost, Casey Golden.[01:01:21] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about us and stay connected, follow us on Twitter at caseycgolden and Ricardo_Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter at RetailRazor and on LinkedIn and on our YouTube channel for video versions of each episode and the occasional bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar. [01:01:39] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us [01:01:40] Ricardo Belmar: and remember there's never been a better time to be in retail, IF you cut through the clutter! Until next time, this is the retail razor show 

S1E7 – SPECIAL: ShopTalk 2022 Recap – Retail’s Great ReunionWelcome to Season 1, Episode 7, a special episode of The Retail Razor Show!For episode 7 we’ve changed things up a bit and Ricardo and Casey bring you a recap of the ShopTalk 2022 event in Las Vegas, which has come to be known as Retail’s Great Reunion! Sure, you’ve probably heard plenty of recap shows on this year’s ShopTalk, but this show doesn’t just tell you “what” happened, we also explain “why” it matters and what that means for retail’s future.I’m your host, Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and lead partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.And I’m your co-host, Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock and slayer of retail frankenstacks!Together, we’re your guides on the retail transformation journey. Whether you're thinking digital and online, mobile, or brick & mortar stores, we’ll help you cut through the clutter!And big news! Our podcast is holding strong on the Feedspot Top 60 Retail podcasts list! We’re sitting strong at #21, so please do give us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts or Spotify Podcasts if you like the show! With your help, we’ll be on our way to a Top 10 spot! Check it out here: https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/The Retail Razor ShowFollow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazorConnect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazorJoin our club on Clubhouse: http://bit.ly/RRazorClubListen to us on Callin: https://bit.ly/RRCallinSubscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTubeSubscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShowRetail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPodHost → Ricardo Belmar,Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmarConnect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmarRead my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmarCo-host → Casey Golden,Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCaseyConnect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICaseyRead my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCaseyTRANSCRIPTS1E7 ShopTalk 2022 Recap - Retail's Great Reunion[00:00:00] Show Introduction[00:00:20] Ricardo Belmar: hello Retail Razor show listeners! Welcome to a special season one bonus episode. Our 2 Part Shop Talk 2022 recap episode. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar a RETHINK Retail, top retail influencer and lead partner marketing advisor for retail and consumer goods at Microsoft. [00:00:38] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host Casey Golden CEO of Luxlock obsessed with the relationship between a brand and the consumer. I've spent my career on the fashion side of the business and moved over to supply chain technology slaying Frankenstacks![00:00:53] Ricardo Belmar: So once again, we have changed things up a bit and interrupted our regularly scheduled episode to bring you our thoughts on what we saw, what we learned and what surprised us about last week's shop talk event in Las Vegas. [00:01:06] Casey Golden: Everyone is reinvigorated to be working in retail. So let's head to the floor.[00:01:11] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Let's give a listen to part one, which we recorded live about a day and a half into the show. [00:01:22] Live from ShopTalk, Part 1[00:01:22] Ricardo Belmar: Hey everybody welcome to retail razor show live from Shoptalk 2022. This is a special live version on Callin. I'm here with my cohost Casey Golden. [00:01:32] Casey Golden: Hello everyone. [00:01:35] Ricardo Belmar: And it is a pleasure to be coming to you live from the show. This is a new thing for us on the Retail Razor Show. Isn't it? Casey. [00:01:42] Casey Golden: It is. And it's a new thing for the record attendance increase at shop talk as well. It's standing room only at retail's biggest reunion. [00:01:51] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I've heard everybody calling it that- retail's biggest reunion. I think the, numbers I've heard of, up to 10,000 people maybe. [00:01:58] It's pretty incredible. [00:02:00] Casey Golden: It's pretty incredible. I mean, I think we actually got New York together again.[00:02:03] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.[00:02:08] It's like I can't go down a hallway. . Every time I take 10 steps down the hallway and suddenly there's somebody looking back at me thinking, Hey wait, do we know each other? We haven't met in the last two years, but it feels like we know each other, [00:02:19] Casey Golden: you know, I have to say , I'm really glad that, we got our LinkedIn pictures that we're just trying to place, but then when everyone started switching their, their Twitter photos to NFTs, I'm like, I don't remember what you look like. [00:02:31] Ricardo Belmar: what do you look like? You don't look at all like your NFT on Twitter. [00:02:35] Casey Golden: No, not at all. I've been like glancing at badges, but - you know, I, this is a first for me. This is my first shop talk.[00:02:41] So I guess I'm starting at the top here[00:02:44] it's, it's really great. So many brands, so many people everybody just really pulling. It's going to be a big year this year. Like everyone's excited. [00:02:55] Ricardo Belmar: There's a huge amount of energy here. It's like everybody has been dying to get back together. See everybody they haven't seen for two years in this industry.[00:03:03] And it shows, it shows that they're, I don't think there's been another show yet for retail. That's been able to do that. [00:03:09] Casey Golden: No, I mean, we started off in day one. The vibe was electric. We literally with electric bands and presentations, and we've got Flo Rida here, which is exciting. [00:03:22] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:03:22] Casey Golden: I know Fabric's doing a big party tonight.[00:03:25] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. There's that too. There's that too, lots of I think every night there's so many things you can't keep track of how many different activities there are? [00:03:31] Casey Golden: No, I mean, I'm, I'm pretty impressed so far. [00:03:34] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. So let's talk about some of the sessions so far. I'm going to call it day one. Maybe we should call it day one and a half. It was like a half day yesterday, I guess. [00:03:42] Casey Golden: Unknowingly. It was a half day. I arrived quite early. [00:03:47] Ricardo Belmar: I arrived late. So I missed part of yesterday. That was kind of unfortunate. [00:03:51] Casey Golden: You missed a lot of waiting.[00:03:56] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. How many people did you say there were two, [00:03:57] Casey Golden: a couple of breakfasts. A couple of lunches. It's like, oh my bad. [00:04:01] Ricardo Belmar: Right? Exactly. [00:04:02] Casey Golden: It starts in what time? [00:04:05] Ricardo Belmar: So I did, I did manage to hit a couple of the keynote sessions yesterday. There was some good, good experiences given out by Kath McLay, the CEO at Sam's Club on their pandemic experience and how they started changing how they think about customers.[00:04:20] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, that, that was like, it was nice to see the opening with just like three amazing women opening up that stage for conversation.[00:04:27] I spent my, my morning over at the shark reef, [00:04:32] Ricardo Belmar: of course. [00:04:32] Casey Golden: Yeah. Lot of great startups, you know, it was just, it's so nice to actually just be around a pitch competition where everybody's a retail tech startup. [00:04:42] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. [00:04:42] Casey Golden: It's so exciting. There's so much going on. There's so much innovation happening and.[00:04:48] All of the pitches were really well. [00:04:49] Ricardo Belmar: Very cool. And then I think just finishing now, by the time we're recording, I think there was a whole series of metaverse related keynotes going on, right? [00:04:59] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, I think maybe everybody will know what an NFT is and what the metaverse might do by the end, by what?[00:05:06] Tomorrow by the end of the week. [00:05:07] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:05:07] Casey Golden: I think brands and techies might just have been able to cross the chasm here. [00:05:12] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, definitely. [00:05:13] Casey Golden: The Superbowl, ahh QR code was not lost. He's alive and well here. [00:05:19] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, no kidding. No kidding. Yeah.[00:05:22] Casey Golden: So some of the tracks we've got, developing tomorrow's retail, innovating growth opportunities, global shopping experiences, love hearing that global shopping experience. And the shark reef startup pitch. So, I mean, these are the way that they're kind of running the day based off the theme and then going down with new speakers, I think it's really great.[00:05:42] Just being able to really dive into these themes because all the brands seem to be aligned on key initiatives. [00:05:48] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:05:49] Casey Golden: You know, [00:05:49] Ricardo Belmar: everybody seems really focused. [00:05:50] Casey Golden: It's really focused. And. Just all about the technologies and customer experience, and everybody's really just ready to go outside of their box and learn.[00:06:01] I think that's the biggest thing is so many meetings about, tell me about what you do, how do you want [00:06:07] to do it? Right. It's a, [00:06:10] Ricardo Belmar: everybody's genuinely interested and there's a lot of focus. Everybody wants to learn more. And everyone's just so excited to see each other. It's just, [00:06:19] I know that's right. That's right.[00:06:21] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's a good, if you're at this show, then you're coming away thinking it's a good time to be in retail tech[00:06:30] Casey Golden: by golly. It took long enough Katia Walsh from Levi's they had a great talk yesterday. On attracting and developing and retaining top digital talent. Where's Ron, when you need him. [00:06:40] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Shout out to Ron. [00:06:42] Casey Golden: Yeah. There was a lot of people that were coming out of that just feeling really invigorated and excited.[00:06:47] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. What else, what other cool sessions have you been to so far?[00:06:49] Casey Golden: You know what I've gotten pulled out of a lot of sessions for meetings. Today is really gonna be focused on sessions and tomorrow the first day I was just so excited to leave my apartment. [00:07:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I've been hearing that a lot from everybody, everyone I run into. It's so good to be away. [00:07:06] Casey Golden: Yeah. I wanted to meet as many people as I could.[00:07:09] I made so many new friends on Twitter over the last two years from clubhouse where these conversations started. Yeah. I've got a whole crew of like new BFFs [00:07:22] Ricardo Belmar: and they're all here. [00:07:23] Everybody's here. That's amazing. [00:07:24] Casey Golden: Being able to spend time to actually talk to people and socialize rather than I got 30 minutes for zoom.[00:07:35] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:07:35] Casey Golden: There's nothing like real life. [00:07:37] Ricardo Belmar: And it's like standing and it's like standing room only. Like you want to meet with someone around here. There's no space. So you gotta find like where where's the empty space that you can kind of huddle around to meet with whoever you want to meet. Yeah. In the next minute.[00:07:49] Casey Golden: Yes. [00:07:49] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:07:50] Casey Golden: It's like, I'll meet you in the corner of here and there. We'll just sit on the floor. It's good. [00:07:56] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And then I got to say about half the people that I've met with, every conversation starts with , I feel like I don't remember how to do a conference any more and , I'm so lost.[00:08:07] I had a dozen people say to me, I forgot how far away everything is in Las Vegas. You think it's right across the street and that's not a five minute walk. I was like, oh, we want to meet in which room? In the convention center. Oh, that's just down the hall, except that the hall is, you know, a thousand feet long.[00:08:22] Casey Golden: Yeah. oh, I'll be right there. And it's like 10, 15 minutes. It's my bad. [00:08:26] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, exactly. So let's see [00:08:28] Casey Golden: oxygen this way.[00:08:33] Ricardo Belmar: Let's see what other, what other trends I'm hearing people talk about sustainability again, I'm hearing more and more talk on retail media, which was one of our predictions for the year, understand there's that there was Instacart session. They talked a lot about retail media advertising on their platform, and that makes sense. You'd expect that [00:08:50] Casey Golden: Yeah, getting much more targeted. A lot of people want to diversify from the Facebook, Instagram ad models and find some new channels to really reach their customers and build on a lot is getting lost in those customer acquisition costs and really being able to actually acquire those customers.[00:09:08] Ricardo Belmar: Right. [00:09:09] Casey Golden: Everybody's on the same platform. So people are getting really creative. Super creative.[00:09:13] I am super impressed too, to see there's a lot of Silicon valley here. [00:09:17] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:09:18] Casey Golden: I was, I was blown away. I'm walking by, I'm like, wait, what Andresseen Horiwitz just took the whole sec. Okay. They're there on almost every panel. There's somebody almost on every panel from Silicon valley, which is, we're just pretty easily.[00:09:34] That means, you know, everybody knows that this is going to be the next 24 months in retail is going to be a big deal. Yeah. And we'll get to see how all of this kind of shakes out what the customers think right in what, 2024.[00:09:51] So this is all for 2025 right now. It's all for 2025.[00:09:56] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And then as usual for a shoptalk, right. A lot of big brands on stage , besides Sam's club and the opening, I think there was Macy's and Target today. A lot of big names talking about what their vision of the future of commerce. I haven't walked the show floor yet [00:10:11] Casey Golden: across the gamut. I mean, going from Ralph Lauren to Albertsons. [00:10:15] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And everything in between.[00:10:16] And if there's one phrase that almost every single session repeats, it has to be meeting our customer where they are being able to let them transact any way they want anywhere they want that. That's, there's like one theme that's hitting every single session.[00:10:31] Everybody's got [00:10:31] that talk, track that enablement. [00:10:34] Casey Golden: A lot more about enablement rather than necessarily building the solution. It's all about how you connect with other solutions. [00:10:39] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Right. [00:10:40] Casey Golden: So a lot of API builds here coming up, [00:10:43] and just a really big rise and a headless. I mean, you can't really walk through here with, without the entire, all the walls talking about headless commerce, but I think there's going to be a lot of interesting changes here going in with.[00:10:55] Some, some replatforming to be able to have that flexibility to connect to all of these new emerging technologies.[00:11:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yep, absolutely. That is a big, big theme. And I've just even, yeah, I can looking forward to walking through the show floor and checking out all of these different companies that are doing just that if I gauge, just by what I see, all the photos I see from the show floor being posted on social. It's like every other one is something related to headless commerce.[00:11:22] Casey Golden: I mean Fabric's doing some killer job right now. Yeah. Commerce tools. It's getting really interesting. I mean, I know a lot of brands right now that have a lot of headless commerce projects in the works which is just opens up so much flexibility for being able to deploy new innovation. [00:11:39] Getting off of some of these. Proprietary systems.[00:11:42] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And then I'll have to come back to metaverse again, because there's so many sessions today on that. I have a feeling that as soon as we leave this recording, all we're going to hear people talking about in the hallways is which brand did what? In a metaverse experiment so far this year.[00:11:56] Casey Golden: Yeah. There you either see a smile or like some eyes rolling, [00:11:59] Ricardo Belmar: right? Yeah. It's like one extreme or the other, right? There's no one between, everybody's either on the one extreme of, I gotta try more. Or are there on the other side and rolling their eyes, thinking, why are you even doing that? What, where do you hope to get from that?[00:12:11] How are you making money from that? [00:12:13] Casey Golden: But this is where we find the utility, right. Is being able to get to experiment. [00:12:17] Ricardo Belmar: It's just like when we did our predictions episode, right? If they're not experimenting, you're not learning. And if you're not learning, you're not going to get anywhere. [00:12:24] Casey Golden: If you're not experimenting, the learning process is not fun. [00:12:29] it's a lot of complicated reading. You just learn as you go and experiment. It's much more fun to learn, by trying and just, you know, go buy an NFT. Go get some Oculus goggles, join discord, [00:12:42] Ricardo Belmar: sign on to Roblox. [00:12:44] Casey Golden: Right. But it is, it's definitely the theme. I just, I just hope that it doesn't turn. You're just this marketing puff. Right. You know, where we do things everybody's talking about it. But then at the end of the day, nobody executes against the plan[00:12:58] Ricardo Belmar: and it all falls apart.[00:12:59] Casey Golden: And we talked about it, but nobody did anything. So I'm really hoping that this really fuels that conversation into the future and really looking at all the priorities that these companies have. Cause I mean, I think.[00:13:12] We're coming into the beginning of April and a lot of projects have already been tested out for the entire rest of the year.[00:13:19] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. Yeah. [00:13:20] Casey Golden: So if you're trying to get into a company to implement technology, you're trying to get a new piece of software approved. A lot's already been allocated.[00:13:29] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:13:30] Casey Golden: A lot's already been allocated. So if anything, if there's a big takeaway here, hopefully there's some slush funds that are created just for innovation on the fly because everything's changing so fast. [00:13:41] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's right. That's right. The key is to keep experimenting and trying it. The other thing that I've noticed too, more people talking about that this wasn't true.[00:13:51] Not, not even just a few years ago is the idea of sharing the knowledge and collaborating with others that you might've thought, oh, I don't want anybody to know what I'm doing because it's my competitive advantage, to a shift where, well, that's not your competitive advantage, right? The fact that you're thinking about doing these things and experimenting, that's not your advantage, your advantage is going to come when you actually get it done and how you do it and how well you execute it.[00:14:14] That's going to give you your advantage. But if somebody else learns along the way, it's one of those rising tides lift all boats, right? So if everybody in the industry starts doing it correctly in a meaningful way, then more and more consumers get interested in this. And then everybody wins. [00:14:28] Casey Golden: But this is one of those things,[00:14:29] Ricardo Belmar: it's not a zero sum game.[00:14:30] Casey Golden: No, this is the, the more, the more people that kind of come together and start doing the same thing, the stronger the whole entire initiative is going to be rather than keeping things so tight, [00:14:40] Ricardo Belmar: right, . Yeah. . I think that that's something we have, I don't remember seeing in past shows, pre pandemic. So I'm wondering if [00:14:47] Casey Golden: there's not even in a culture period. [00:14:50] Ricardo Belmar: No, it wasn't. So I think that's a new takeaway. That's coming from this. And I kind of feel like a lot of it has to do with everybody. You know, everyone in this industry has been around in so many ways, people know people , which sounds silly to say, but it's so true.[00:15:04] Right. That's why everybody, you see this happening right. In every hallway at the show, people just running into each other. I haven't seen you in two years. And I think that's just caused everybody to want to share. [00:15:13] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, what have you been up to?[00:15:15] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly, exactly. [00:15:16] Casey Golden: Being able to take those conversations into just not what the agenda was for a call. Yeah. You know, and just kind of speak freely and things that you're excited about or things that you've been learning about or what you've been doing on the side, a lot of the stuff , we've had a lot of extra time to pick up new hobbies and new interest in a lot of that.[00:15:32] Right. I don't know any retail person that really has a life outside of retail, you know, what is it? Eat, sleep. Like we breathe retail. The drift, the brand right. Brand DNA. Right. So I mean, there's just so much that there's been so many new books that have been written during the pandemic.[00:15:51] There's been so many perspectives that have been shared. Yeah. And just kind of going down rabbit holes. So I'm super excited for the rest of the week on this. I think we'll probably have some good takeaway notes to kind of add on here. [00:16:03] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. We're going to have to do a followup show on how the rest of shop talk went after this one, [00:16:10] Casey Golden: because the big thing are we coming back?[00:16:12] Well, I know you are, but this is a show that I would not have normally have come to. Yeah. I wasn't planning at all. I bought a ticket on Thursday and flew out Saturday because there's just so many people that are going to [00:16:26] be here. No. I'm like the opportunity. [00:16:29] Right. All right. Let's go check out [00:16:31] this Shoptalk.[00:16:32] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Well that was my first one too. It was, but I, so I wasn't sure what to expect, but it definitely, definitely is well worth the vibe. [00:16:39] Casey Golden: Yeah. They really brought the energy here knowing that it was going to be every, a lot of people's first time back out and like, yeah, there's some good entertainment.[00:16:49] There's some good design. They put a lot of effort into keeping the energy level high, especially in such a big space. [00:16:55] Ricardo Belmar: That's a good point. That's a good point. Although I think the one, if my one suggested tip for them. So any of the, anybody listening from the event, because I'm sure they're all listening to every single word we're saying, but my big tip is more meeting spaces for just impromptu, nice little seating areas.[00:17:11] You're just for when you have those moments. When you run into somebody in the hallway, you don't have to just stand around in the middle of the floor and chatting. You don't have some place to sit somewhere. I mean, come on. [00:17:20] Casey Golden: Yeah, because it has, okay, let's meet all the way on the other side.[00:17:25] Ricardo Belmar: It takes 10 minutes to walk down. It takes time. [00:17:27] Casey Golden: We'll meet there in a half an hour. Because it is that I forgot like a guy here and I was just like, oh yeah, this is like bigger than a New York avenue. A Las Vegas block is bigger than a New York avenue.[00:17:41] So what is on your schedule for the rest of today? [00:17:44] Ricardo Belmar: I had to try to check out some, I got some sessions I'm gonna try to check out. I've got fun things going on, doing some other interesting video recordings with some other, other fellow friends haven't seen in two years. So that'll be cool.[00:17:58] And how we'll see, we'll see what comes from that. I'm looking forward to Sessions. Cause there are a lot of different topics once we get past the the metaverse that's going on now. There's some things on just on like data. There, there is interesting to see if there's, few sessions on future of work and how frontline worker conditions are changing.[00:18:17] I think those would be interesting and I think there's some really cool keynote ones left. With some interesting brands. [00:18:24] Casey Golden: Yeah, I'm going to head over to cultivating customer relationships have got the chief data officer over at Poshmark and the information officer over at, from Maui, Jim, and then experienced design with best buy, which I just find completely foreign for cultivating customer relationships.[00:18:41] So Annie A's going to be there as the interviewer. So this is going to be. Really interesting. Because when you think of Poshmark, I don't think of customers service or relationship, or I fall in love with my poshers, right. That they gift wrap my purchase and they send me these beautiful little handwritten notes.[00:19:00] I'm like, come on. Like frankly, shopping on Poshmark is, so much sweeter and kinder than ordering online. You can put little confetti in my box.[00:19:12] So I'm really excited to kind of dig into that because I only look at it from such a tight perspective. So this for me is really about opening up my mind to kind of see what everybody else is doing. Since I have such tunnel vision in general,[00:19:26] Ricardo Belmar: it's called focus. We call that focus, Casey. [00:19:29] Casey Golden: That's right. Focus. [00:19:31] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, bring the marketing speak.[00:19:33] Casey Golden: I, I was focused on until I saw this. I'm like, wow, you guys are all over the place. [00:19:36] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly, exactly. You, and then I think there's a couple of looking forward to on some interesting new innovative tech to do so hope to get through those. [00:19:44] Casey Golden: A lot with check out.[00:19:46] There's a lot of stuff happening with checkout. [00:19:48] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:19:48] Casey Golden: You get to pick where, how you want to check out five different ways. [00:19:52] Ricardo Belmar: A lot of focus on that, yep. [00:19:53] Casey Golden: It's kind of interesting [00:19:54] Ricardo Belmar: all about making it a frictionless experience. [00:19:57] Casey Golden: So let's get back out on the floor. [00:19:59] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Then we'll wrap up here and we're going to plan on circling back after the show at some point.[00:20:04] See what the, rest of the week plays out for us. [00:20:06] Casey Golden: Yeah. We'll have a full, good recap of what you missed.[00:20:09] Ricardo Belmar: Everything we liked, anything we didn't. [00:20:10] Casey Golden: what you need to google [00:20:12] Ricardo Belmar: exactly. Yeah. What to look up? Who to talk to all that good stuff. All right. Cool. So we will call this one a wrap! [00:20:18] Intermission[00:20:18] Ricardo Belmar: And we're back. That was the first part of our special Shop talk recap episode, which we recorded live on the Callin app about halfway through the event. Hopefully, you are ready to jump straight into the second half of the Great Retail Reunion so we can give you the rest of the juicy story. Let's listen to part two of our shop talk 2022 recap also recorded in the Callin app. [00:20:50] ShopTalk Recap on Callin, Part 2[00:20:50] Ricardo Belmar: Casey. [00:20:52] Casey Golden: Good morning. Good morning. [00:20:53] Good morning. [00:20:54] Ricardo Belmar: Good morning. We are back on Callin. How cool is that? [00:20:58] Casey Golden: I like it. [00:20:59] Ricardo Belmar: All right. So when we were last on here, We did our live day, one and a half. I think I called it session from shop talk, where we talked about what we saw on the first day and on like the, what we about halfway through the second day, the first day was only a half day, right?.[00:21:14] Casey Golden: Unexpectedly, yes[00:21:16] Ricardo Belmar: unexpectedly, yeah, unexpectedly, but we did both note that it was unexpectedly a half day. So now we're back to do our whole recap summary of the entire events and kind of run through some, all the big themes that we saw there. And there were quite a few, I think I'm gonna say like the biggest one that sorta surprised me, but maybe shouldn't have, is this whole idea that everybody, it seemed like every session couldn't stop talking about how stores are quote back.[00:21:41] Or, as I like to say as if they ever really went away, because they never really did go away, but, but everybody seems to act like, oh, brick and mortar is coming back. [00:21:49] Casey Golden: Yeah.[00:21:49] Stores weren't closed in a lot of locations for, for too long. So it is a little bit surprising to hear stores are back. Maybe there has been this, this huge focus for e-commerce. [00:22:00] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And I guess maybe for shop talk that's especially true, right? [00:22:03] With a lot of digitally native vertical brands starting out online.[00:22:07] A lot of founders, always presenting at shop. Talk about the cool new new products they're bringing to the market. So I guess if I think about it in those terms, yeah, might be a little strange to see people talking about stores coming back, but there were more and more founders and DTC is getting up on stage, talking about how, you just can't grow past a certain point.[00:22:26] Like I heard, at least one mentioned how you, if you want to get past a hundred million, you got to start opening stores. You just can't do it. Cause like customer acquisition costs are too high. [00:22:35] Casey Golden: Yeah. I've seen a lot of people putting plans open to open up stores, more pop-up shops. We did lose some stores.[00:22:42] But I think, you know, we're still working on that right set of what's the right amount of stores and where should they be? [00:22:47] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's true. [00:22:48] Casey Golden: With a lot of underperforming locations in general. [00:22:52] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. It is all about the location and getting the right spot. [00:22:55] Casey Golden: Yeah. Got to know where that customer is.[00:22:57] Ricardo Belmar: And I think we've seen it proven out time after time, that time one of these direct to consumer brands opens a store, their e-commerce sales actually go up in the surrounding zip codes. [00:23:07] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, a lot of that online browsing, it drives that, that in store experience I found more opportunity in looking online so that I can go into the store and see what inventory is there. But I do have to say it's been increasingly difficult because that's not a, that's not an option that I personally even used to use, but now it seems to be that I need to check to see what's in the store because so much inventory is light.[00:23:34] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. Yeah. Right. [00:23:36] Casey Golden: And I'm like, well, if I go there, Are you going to have that? What I just saw online. So I think there's going to be a lot of tech going back into brick and mortar, new budgets. Let's hope that brick and mortar stores are back means that they also have budgets. [00:23:52] Ricardo Belmar: I, you know, if I judged from the general sense I got at the show, it's a hundred percent true. [00:23:58] Casey Golden: Yeah.[00:23:59] Ricardo Belmar: And we talked about that right. In our prediction to show at the beginning of the year that there was going to be more investment in stores, that stores were going to go strong and that were, that investment level was going up. The IT spend was going up.[00:24:11] I think if anything, I come away from shop talk thinking that our predictions are going to hold true. [00:24:15] Casey Golden: I agree. I've never seen so many people happy and reinvigorated about their careers. And like, we do have an opportunity in, in this, the best industry right now. I feel there's going to be so much change so much excitement and everybody is just really excited to talk with each other to collaborate and to learn.[00:24:37] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I when you had sessions, like Sam's club CEO, Kath McLay, when she talked about all the interesting convenience shopping features that they introduced over the last two years. And the impact of that had not just on their shopping experience, but just with what business impact that had and how people started to spend more, how they serve customers and the things that everybody has talked about this for a while, right.[00:24:59] Things like scanning, go checkout. They had an interesting concept of scan and ship from the store for things when they're out of stock and you can just scan it and have it shipped to you, on the spot. It really kind of reaffirmed that I heard this, not just in that session, but in other ones that , if you're not embracing everyone's favorite word to hate in retail, and that's omni-channel, if you're not a brand that's doing that then you're completely missing out, right? You're not going to grow your relationship with those customers. And that's why so many of those digitally native brands kept getting onstage, talking about how many stores they were going to open up. [00:25:30] Casey Golden: Yeah. And, and it's very interesting when you take the DNV B and...[00:25:36] The information they're looking at when they're opening up a store compared to a traditional retailer. When they're looking at where where's my customer, who's going to engage in store versus an online DNVB's have a very much broader detail on, on their customer base. Just because they've collected so much more of that direct to consumer data and had those relationships online.[00:26:01] So it will be interesting, when, some of these locations open up it'll be interesting to see where everybody puts themselves in what communities what towns, because it's not going to necessarily be the largest. [00:26:14] Ricardo Belmar: You're right. There are going to be super smart about where they put these just based on the data they've got about their existing customer base.[00:26:23] And I think this, this whole expansion of them into more. Omni-channel mode, just kind of, for me, reaffirms that whether you love or hate the term, the idea around it, it really is just a synonym for how consumers want to shop period. End of statement. Right. It's just that everybody now realizes, that there's almost, wasn't a point. Thinking about individual sales channels, because that's not how people shop or people have completely adopted this mode of whether I'm in a digital channel or I'm in a store. I'm blending them every single moment. I'm shopping with a brand I'm blending all of these channels and that's how I expect to shop period. [00:27:01] Casey Golden: Yeah..[00:27:01] Ricardo Belmar: Then that's what every brand has to accept and embrace now.[00:27:04] Casey Golden: So ricardo, are we saying that. Omni-channel is coming back into conversation and we might just figure it out this year? [00:27:10] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think anybody who hasn't figured it out yet is definitely going to figure it out whether or not they want to call it omni channel.[00:27:17] I think there's still plenty of people that hate calling it omni-channel as a term. And I'll admit that I go back and forth on that one. I would almost prefer to just think of it as pure commerce. Right. It's just, it's the normal mode of operation. It's not a special thing anymore. It's just the way we all shop.[00:27:33] Casey Golden: Yeah, no, [00:27:33] I think that's great. Ikea also put a lot of new tech into their digitization strategy for stores with click and collect and, doing that customer journey using a lot more technology tools inside of their locations. [00:27:46] Ricardo Belmar: Let's expand a little on that because there were, as much as we just said, it's not about the channel. It's about the customer but let's for a moment, think about channels. There were a lot of interesting new channels being talked about at Shoptalk. One was live streaming which again was another one of our top 10 predictions. [00:28:01] Casey Golden: Favorite![00:28:02] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. That's right. I saw , a cool demonstration one session on started giving you a way to integrate live streaming in all of your other channels.[00:28:10] So for example, whether it's your mobile app or your website, and so you have some live streams going when someone gets to a product page on a product that's tied to a live stream, you can insert the live stream right then and there, right? So you don't have to add an extra step for the consumer to pop into that live stream and see what's going on.[00:28:26] So I thought that was an, an interesting approach. Now, there was a lot of talk that live streaming is huge in China and throughout Asia. The big question is, is it going to work the same in Western countries? I I'm, I'm thinking that it's, it's not, I'm not going to say that it isn't going to work. I absolutely think it will, but I think it's going to be different. [00:28:45] Casey Golden: It's going to have to be different. [00:28:46] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:28:47] Because, because people shop differently, people look at this technology differently in Western countries and the, in that sense, and it's not that one is better or more right. Or more wrong. It's just, it's just different.[00:28:57] And everybody has to adapt to. The one thing I heard that I was most excited for live streaming. I think you and I talked about this in our predictions episode was the idea of using your store associates to run your live streams. And I think you and I've talked about that with our friend, Ron .[00:29:12] And I actually heard that mentioned on stage about how there is an expectation that maybe that's going to be the way it goes, which for me is a little different than what we see happening in Asia. I like this term that we've talked about before the sort of the, the engineered influencer, when a retail brand creates their own influencer by using their store associates for that.[00:29:31] Casey Golden: Yeah. I'm obviously a big fan of that. I also do though see the value in having the studios. I see a lot more studios popping up. I see more people, more brands creating a dedicated space for live streaming and setting up that area specifically for live streaming and getting that personality.[00:29:50] That is kind of like the base of the brand that they're pulling in for those. I do think it's a different talent than being a salesperson on the floor. But I like the direction either way. [00:30:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And it wouldn't surprise me if we see a mix of the two, right. More, depending on the, maybe the size of the retailer, whether you build out these studios or whether you do something else, it's more smaller scale.[00:30:11] But but I think we're gonna see both of those happening from large and small retailers, [00:30:16] Casey Golden: I agree. And just kind of taking control on bringing that to their own website rather than relying on the. Tik TOK or the Instagram live, or even some of these Amazon lives, right? There's a lot of third parties where they've already built quite an audience, but most of the tech that I saw was about bringing that live stream conversation and event onto the brands' website and owning that engagement on the site where they can convert. [00:30:45] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. That's big. That's big [00:30:49] Casey Golden: still not, not saying that they're going to stop using other channels, but I just saw a lot of an emphasis of bringing these e-commerce stores to life. [00:30:58] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I agree. And. On that note, one of my other favorite topics that kept coming up or retail media networks and a lot of shop talk sessions, especially any session that had one of the local delivery guys, whether it was the Uber CEO or Instacart CEO or somebody from door dash.[00:31:12] I mean, they were all talking about converting their delivery service into more of a marketplace where, you know, some of them even admitted, right. That the delivery part of the business is probably no better than a breakeven business, but where they're really going to get their revenue in the future is from advertising.[00:31:29] Because like any other marketplace, you've got to sell advertising on it. So the brands to get customers to notice. So again, another one of our predictions from the beginning of the year, right? This was another popular one. Obviously, you know, Amazon's killing it. Walmart and target. Aren't doing too bad on that.[00:31:46] Kroger is crushing it with their media network. Everybody wants to get in on this. I dunno, what are you, what do you think on that one, Casey? [00:31:52] Casey Golden: Well, it's not a space where you're printing cash. You're burning it. And so these last mile and these delivery services, like they have been wonderful over the last two years.[00:32:03] It's it's exposed customer bases that have never even thought that they would ever order their groceries online or have something delivered. Those services are getting pushed back because it just hasn't been as profitable. It's not a big money maker, but they got the customers and they got, they built their brands.[00:32:22] They've made it onto the front of an, of hundreds of thousands of consumers phones. Their app is now on the front because we have relied on it for the last couple of years. And so they're gonna, they're finding new ways to be able to monetize and move with those customers and hopefully something that just makes them a little bit more profit because some of the, a lot of these services are pushing back in, in certain areas.[00:32:46] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Totally true. So that one to me is an interesting one. Looking forward to watching how that one, how that develops across the board with a media networks and with all of these delivery, guys are already starting to see some shake out of that, which again, another topic we had in our top 10, right, was that there was going to be some consolidation or some sort of shake out in that space.[00:33:04] And we see that happening. [00:33:05] Casey Golden: Forgive me. I don't re I don't recall. But some of these multi-brand retailers are launching retail media networks and focusing on media, which I found very interesting that rather than being that distribution point and that stock point for the customers to be able to come in and shop across multiple brands in our traditional retail model.[00:33:28] They've launched their own retail media network. And charging brands for the content. [00:33:33] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. So I can't wait to see what some of these DNVB brands that have come up right. Who are used to spending all of their marketing and customer acquisition on all like Facebook and Instagram, places like that.[00:33:45] And now suddenly if they start going into wholesale agreements with other retailers who have their own marketplace, guess what? They're going to be buying advertising space from the retailers. [00:33:53] Casey Golden: Yeah.[00:33:54] Ricardo Belmar: So that's going to be an interesting one to see what that does to their to their cost model. [00:33:57] Casey Golden: I, a hundred percent agree.[00:33:59] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. So we have to talk about the metaverse because it kind of felt like on the second day, it's like every other session at shop talk was about metaverse and, and I, and it's, it's funny to me because there are, at least I can think of at least one, but there were a bunch of our, friendly retail expert friends who were kind of getting tired of hearing so much about the metaverse that they felt.[00:34:19] You know, metaverse, doesn't seem to exist outside of retail conferences. [00:34:23] Casey Golden: Oh, you got that, too?[00:34:25] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I heard that too. Yeah, I know. [00:34:26] Casey Golden: But something thing about the metaverse and like, "if I hear that word one more time" or[00:34:31] " I'm not, he's like, I'm going to be done with the word by the time I leave." [00:34:34] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. [00:34:35] Casey Golden: I mean, just rolling of eyes. I mean, you could really see , who was, kind of rolling their eyes and then at the same time, whose eyes wanted to pop out because they were so excited. [00:34:45] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. It's like you had two extremes of the show. You had every. Could not wait to jump up on stage and show off what they're want to do in the metaverse. And you had the other half of the people rolling their eyes saying, oh no, not another metaverse session. Come on. It's not real. [00:35:01] Casey Golden: Exactly. I'm like, it's like, well, we know who's on Twitter.[00:35:04] Don't we? [00:35:06] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. That's right. And I had my, one of my favorite, one of my favorite comments on that is, and I can't remember now who said it first, but it was said a bunch of times as you know, for as much. People are getting up on stage, talking about how stores are back. If they weren't talking about how stores are back, they were talking about the metaverse and it's like, you've got these two extremes, .[00:35:24] Either everybody's going back to the stores or everybody's going to jump into the metaverse and do their shopping there. [00:35:28] Casey Golden: Yeah. It just, I think at the end of the day, people want to be together again. [00:35:32] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I agree. I agree. But I'm still gonna say though. If you're a brand that's not a reason to stop doing whatever your experiment you're doing on the metaverse that this is still the year where you should be trying things out, testing the waters, see what your customers are going to accept what they like, what they don't like, and just figure out what, what you might do in the future.[00:35:52] This isn't the year where you're gonna make a lot of top line revenue out of the metaverse and whatever presence you have. It's the year where you're just going to experiment and try things and see what you, what you're going to invest in later. [00:36:02] Casey Golden: Exactly exactly. I mean, we haven't had something this fun and creative to talk about for, I mean, probably most of the history.[00:36:11] I mean, it's, since we had e-commerce the metaverse brings a new, a new life and a new, energy to the space in general. So, it has to be exciting to talk about. We have traditionally, it's been very much supply chain. Supply chain is not the sexiest industry and conversation. There's not a lot of creativity on there's definitely no fluorescent green or neon lights when we're dealing with the supply chain.[00:36:36] We've got a lot of barcodes. So I think it's going to be. Really interesting how this kind of merges into these conversations into these budgets to be a fly on the wall in 2022 at a brand I'm slightly missing that opportunity to be able to hear these conversations as they happen. [00:36:54] Ricardo Belmar: Right, right.[00:36:55] Yeah. And you know, one of the interesting supply chain conversations, I heard a lot of, which I was pleased to see is this a sort of acceptance that you can't look at your supply chain as a cost center anymore, but it's really more of a, of a differentiated asset for your business. Just given all the challenges that are still out there in the supply chain, around the world, [00:37:15] that we haven't solved all those problems in the last couple of years. There's still issues there. And, and that, to me, kind of led to some more discussions around just profitability in general, right. We used to go to these shows and, and just listened to a speaker after speaker talk about this new disruptive thing they were doing and all of this VC money that was pouring in to help prop everybody up and, fund them to try to get growth really fast, but nobody ever worried about profitability.[00:37:40] And now it seems like. Maybe it's because there are people or something to worry about and inflation and some of these other supply chain issues. But now there's a little bit more of a thought as to, well, when are these things going to turn profitable? [00:37:51] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean, just for the presence of venture capitalists at Shoptalk it was big and so.[00:37:58] Really seeing how, they've made a lot of investments in direct to consumer. So I find it very intriguing of their attendance. And then also getting so much on supply chain and physical stores, because traditionally that's just not really been where their money has been spent. But I think that they, everybody kind of realizes that that's where that's where the budgets are going to go.[00:38:20] That's where the investment's going to go. And that's, what's going to set apart winners from losers over the next few years.[00:38:26] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, and I guess it, you almost kinda have to say after, after watching all the VCs that were there, but it turns out that shockingly, these VCs actually want to make a return on their money.[00:38:37] They don't just want to give it to everybody. [00:38:39] Casey Golden: I think there's been some hard lessons in the space. And then also with the pandemic, you know, digital is definitely risen, but it's about next steps. [00:38:47] Ricardo Belmar: Right, right. And what are those next steps? [00:38:49] Yeah. Yeah. Just be more of the same Sam's club. Right, exactly.[00:38:52] Casey Golden: Yeah. You know, opening up more stores. [00:38:54] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. That's right. And. Yeah. And then another topic that kind of related to that, that I started hearing more about that I think is sort of taking a back seat the last couple of years, and that was sustainability. You know, consumers still care about sustainability. I've seen some numbers lately, one study said 84% of consumers still say that sustainability is important to them when they're making a purchase decision. I saw another report that 60% of consumers are willing to change their shopping behavior. If they believe that change will reduce environmental impact.[00:39:24] And this one kind of surprised me, I'd say that I saw had a number of like 66, 67% people say they were willing to pay more for a brand that demonstrates real sustainable practices. And that's the, big fact right there at conferences, pre pandemic people were talking about sustainability.[00:39:41] You couldn't find a brand or a retailer that was going to say, oh no, I'm not worried about that. Everybody was worried about everybody said they were doing something, but at the end of the day, how many were really doing something tangible? [00:39:52] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, there's, there's a lot more going into packaging.[00:39:56] The marketing content is much more focused in that area. It's really gonna come down to like proof in the pudding, you know, in the coming year of how much you've actually executed against. But I find it very interesting. As the economy shifts, sustainability conversations go up and down. We tried to do this in 2007, with organic lines, more sustainability.[00:40:19] We tried to do it. And the economy went down. And the sustainability companies and the organic apparel companies closed their doors. So I hope that this time it's, it's here to stay and I think it's here to stay. Consumers are ready for it, and they're willing to change their behavior to take hold of it.[00:40:39] We've also had a lot of negative press over the last two years about the impact of our industry, because I do have to say like the fashion industry is, is part of the problem. [00:40:51] Ricardo Belmar: You're absolutely right. Absolutely. Right. So that, probably could have gotten even more attention at shop talk.[00:40:56] I think I heard more hallway discussion around that maybe then than actual speaking sessions, but it did come up. The last thing, I guess, worth mentioning, you just touched on it the economy that we've had these essentially for, a lot of retailers two booming years of sales and revenue and profitability.[00:41:11] So the, the retailers that went into the pandemic with the right technology investments and the right operational structures, they won, they came out as winners, everybody else? Maybe not so much and that they hopefully learned some lessons over the last couple of years on where they need to improve and what they need to do.[00:41:27] But so now that leaves, for me two big questions, but just sort of heard rumblings about at the show, one being, how do you comp against those last few years, if you were one of those spectacular retailers, can you still eat out another year of spectacular growth or do you expect it to level off?[00:41:41] And if you were not one of those winners, do you recover now? What are you going to do? How are you catching up to the winners and recover from that. And in both of those cases, is, the economy and is inflation going to be something that challenges you, you've got, some other unknown factors with consumer spending around people wanting to buy less stuff now, because we can all go out again.[00:42:01] So people want more experiences. Travel is probably going to come back more. People are going back to restaurants and it's all the same pile of money at the end of the day, so to speak. So what if, if consumers over the last two years shifted their spend to stuff and now it goes back to services and experiences, then we'll, if you're one of those brands selling stuff, you might not sell as much. [00:42:20] Casey Golden: Yeah that's going to be, it's going to be really interesting on consumer behavior coming out of the pandemic. I mean, I myself have made some dramatic differences in my shopping behavior and even how I want to spend my money. And I'm not a typical consumer we know too much, don't we?[00:42:37] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, we do too, but we're dangerous that way as consumers, but, you know, [00:42:41] Casey Golden: So I think it's going to be interesting because what are you copying? Because so much happened during the pandemic with consumer behavior and some of it was forced. Some of it was a natural progression. Some of it was. Introspect.[00:42:55] So when it comes down to comp-ing, we're looking at 2019, we're looking at 2021, but we're really going to be building these projections kind of fresh. And there's going to be a little bit of instability on meeting those goals because we're going to be learning. They're going to be learning so much every quarter, this year of what's real.[00:43:15] And , what stuck. And what is the future look like? [00:43:19] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. So that's going to be really interesting to see when all of these brands and retailers start doing their quarterly reports with their forward-looking statements are going to be, I think that's going to be the most, the most telling thing of, of what we learned from them.[00:43:33] So any, last thoughts that stood out to you Casey? Before we close this out? [00:43:37] Casey Golden: Well, you know, I have some last thoughts. I found that the convention hall was buzzing which I find rare at trade shows. It's not used the energy. Isn't typically. Convention hall. But I found it to be very different. It's my first experience at Shoptalk. I had a great one and everybody had, I mean, everything was buzzing. Everybody wanted to talk and learn and, I heard some great questions and people just really digging in and open to the idea of selecting new vendors.[00:44:07] So I'm pretty excited. [00:44:09] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, you're right, the excitement level was high and everybody came away from the show feeling just as excited about their retail and retail tech future. [00:44:16] Casey Golden: I mean, how lucky are we? [00:44:18] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, if anything, shop talk, convinced anybody that went, this is a great industry to be in. And for most people that reaffirmed that Not only is it a great industry to be in, but that you're probably really happy to be in it. [00:44:29] Casey Golden: Yep. I agree. [00:44:33] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Well with that, I think we going to wrap up our great retail reunion. Shoptalk recap on Callin [00:44:39] Casey Golden: bye everyone.[00:44:40] Ricardo Belmar: Bye everybody. [00:44:46] Show Summary[00:44:46] Casey Golden: Welcome back everyone. We hope that you enjoyed our fun recap of retail's big reunion.[00:44:52] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I know I did. I hope we captured the energy from the show last week, Casey. I know it's been what, like two years, since most people in retail had been to a major conference, but it really did feel like a reunion! [00:45:02] Casey Golden: New friends, old, Shoptalk was the place to be. And the hottest industry for doers, retails driving change with the most unsuspected players.[00:45:15] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, you are absolutely right about that. I think that will pretty much close this out for a special episode of the show and we hope to see all of our listeners again next time! [00:45:25] Show Closing[00:45:25] Casey Golden: If you enjoyed the show, please consider giving us a five-star rating and review on apple podcast. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. So you don't miss a minute. Want to know more about what we talked about? Take a look at our show notes for handy links and more deets.[00:45:42] I'm your cohost Casey Golden. [00:45:44] Ricardo Belmar: If you'd like to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at Casey C golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter at RetailRazor, on LinkedIn, and on our YouTube channel for video versions of each episode and bonus content. [00:45:59] I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.[00:46:01] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.[00:46:04] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter . Until next time, this is the retail razor show. 

S1E6 – The Retail Avengers vs The Trials of Digital Transformation & Innovation, Part 1Welcome to Season 1, Episode 6, the sixth episode of The Retail Razor Show!I’m your host, Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and lead partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.And I’m your co-host, Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock and slayer of retail frankenstacks!Together, we’re your guides on the retail transformation journey. Whether you're thinking digital and online, mobile, or brick & mortar stores, we’ll help you cut through the clutter!For episode 6 we’re letting the Retail Avengers fly solo, sans guests, and dive into understanding the tailwinds of digital transformation and innovation in retail. Why is this so important for retailers, and how can retailers best develop a culture that supports digital transformation and innovation? Plus, we dig into how retailers can introduce outside ideas into that culture in a positive manner. This is the first of a two-part series on digital transformation and innovation!And big news! Our podcast is holding strong on the Feedspot Top 60 Retail podcasts list! We’re sitting strong at #21, so please do give us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts or Spotify Podcasts if you like the show! With your help, we’ll be on our way to a Top 10 spot! Check it out here: https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/The Retail Razor ShowFollow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazorConnect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazorJoin our club on Clubhouse: http://bit.ly/RRazorClubListen to us on Callin: https://bit.ly/RRCallinSubscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTubeSubscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShowRetail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPodHost → Ricardo Belmar,Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmarConnect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmarRead my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmarCo-host → Casey Golden,Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCaseyConnect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICaseyRead my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCaseyTRANSCRIPTS1E6 The Retail Avengers vs The Trials of Digital Transformation & Innovation, Part 1[00:00:20] Show Introduction[00:00:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hello. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. No matter what time of day you're listening , welcome, welcome to season one episode six of the Retail Razor Show. your host, Ricardo Belmar a RETHINK Retail, top retail influencer partner marketing advisor for retail and consumer goods at Microsoft.[00:00:36] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, obsessed with the relationship between a brand and a consumer. I've spent my career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business slaying franken-stacks. [00:00:49] Ricardo Belmar: So for this week, we're changing the pace a bit. This episode and the Retail Avengers fly solo, so to speak, sans guests, and specifically Jeff Roster joined me for the first part of the discussion. And then you can joined us Casey, talk about the future of digital transformation and innovation in retail.[00:01:05] is part one of a two-part discussion. And for this week we focused on understanding the challenges in corporate culture for retailers.[00:01:13] Casey Golden: The pandemic really changed the situation for retailers around innovation and digital transformation, Ricardo. Corporate cultures have changed down to the DNA of their organization. [00:01:23] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's so true. Casey, and one area that's really introduced a massive change in that DNA and culture is in the IT budget. And we're not talking. How much retailers spend on infrastructure or the lights on with all their legacy systems. Now we're talking about the amount of budget spend on just pure innovation and transformation.[00:01:41] Successful retailers have really turned the corner on how much they spend on this . [00:01:45] Casey Golden: And even more importantly, they've overcome their fear t o experiment And you and Jeff really get into that a bit more. [00:01:52] Ricardo Belmar: Definitely. Definitely. So let's jump into the Clubhouse discussion and then we'll come back here and recap a bit. Plus talk about what really stands out to us from the whole discussion[00:02:00] Casey Golden: Sounds good. So before we get caught up in one of my favorite conversations, money, let's listen to the Retail Avengers versus the Trials of Digital Transformation and Innovation. [00:02:15] Clubhouse Session[00:02:15] Ricardo Belmar: welcome everybody into the retail razor room. I'm here with my fellow Retail Avenger, Jeff Roster. Jeff, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself. [00:02:23] Jeff Roster: So Jeff Roster former Gartner and IHL retail sector analyst now on a bunch of advisory boards and doing a podcast, this week in innovation, and rolling with Ricardo at retail tech predictions, 2025. [00:02:36] Ricardo Belmar: All right, thanks Jeff. And for anybody that doesn't know in the audience, I'm Ricardo Belmar. [00:02:40] I've been a long time retail tech guy at different technology providers and service providers to the retail industry. Now currently with Microsoft as a Partner Marketing Advisor in the U S so let's get rolling into our topic for today. We are going to talk about the future of digital transformation and innovation in retail and retail tech out towards 2025.[00:03:04] And if you're wondering why we picked this topic well, for one as you might guess from the title of Jeff's podcast This Week In Innovation, it's a topic near and dear to our hearts that we often find ourselves in conversations. If you've been to our rooms in the past, and you've heard from the other members of our team, you know, we all have a relationship with retail tech in some way.[00:03:23] And we're always interested in the future of innovation in this industry, which it's probably safe to say doesn't have the greatest history of being innovative in the past, but I would argue that in recent years that's been dramatically changing. [00:03:37] Would you agree, Jeff?, [00:03:38] Jeff Roster: Well, given, I started in 2000 when I'm literally, little to talk about. I mean, every, every day now there's something new. If you look at what's happened with, with artificial intelligence blockchain, all that edge every single day that, you know, there's 5, 6, 10, 15 articles to go through. Just an amazing, amazing amount of uptake.[00:03:56] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I agree. I forget where I seen this, but and I'm sure if you've seen it too, , if you just look at the sheer number of retail tech startups that are popping up now, this is a really hot market. There are retail tech startups, and just about every conceivable space of technology that's relevant to a retailer, including ones that maybe weren't thought of as little as a year or two ago I'll just give one example that I find myself talking about a lot lately and that's in the whole area of returns management.[00:04:20] And in some cases, even what I'll call return prevention analysis you could say that the rise of e-commerce has perhaps inflated the whole returns processing challenge for retailers. But I think that's an really interesting area now where there's a lot of new technology coming up in a lot of new retail tech startups, trying to address this problem and make it easier and therefore lower cost to handle returns.[00:04:42] Jeff Roster: You know, my podcast partner, Brian, and I think there's probably well over multiple thousands of retail sector startups. We're counting them in the thousands. [00:04:51] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. In the thousands. I'm actually not surprised by that number. [00:04:54] Jeff Roster: I am a lot. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of people, but you know, if you just look at anybody that touches AI and they, and they put retail in their title, I mean, that sort of explains it.[00:05:06] How many are really hardcore will be successful. [00:05:09] Ricardo Belmar: That's a different question, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's a different question. You, you know, an interesting aspect to that, that I'd like to look at is where all of these new tech startups regardless of what aspect of retail technology they're addressing, there's a difference in who they're targeting, right.[00:05:26] Are we looking at thousands of startups that are targeting tier one retailers, or are we looking at thousands of startups that are distributed across targeting tier one retailers down to, you know, small business retail owners? [00:05:40] Jeff Roster: So typically. I don't know that I, I mean, no one's ever really asked that question or surveyed that group.[00:05:46] It's a pretty hard group to even survey since we're not even sure how many there are in just, you know, it's going to be a great question. I'm going to ask that going forward, but in the conversations I'm having more and more. It's usually when I ask what's segmentation, it's usually they say retail and you know, of course being an analyst, it drives me insane.[00:06:01] So tier one, tier two, tier three, tier four is not a whole lot of startups just saying, I want to go up during out tier four, tier five, it's all almost exclusively tier one, tier two. Right. And depending on your definition, I don't know Ricardo, if you have a different definition than I, but tier one's greater than a billion tier twos, nine 99 million to two 50 million in tier three, it's two 50 to 50.[00:06:21] And that's, that's the segmentation I've used for 20 years. So you could probably make the case. I need to bump up tier one to like a super tier one whatever, but it's, it's still a massive number. And literally, I can't think of a startup that's really going after tier four tier five. That would be a pretty tough.[00:06:35] For a startup, they're all, they're all trying to fill out, trying to go for the sweet [00:06:38] Ricardo Belmar: spot. Yeah. It, it, it's a scaling issue, right. For, for a startup is you want to maximize the size of my first few customers, right. To keep the business going and scaling to that was the small business set. Right. Where you're talking about, you know, you're going to spend just as much time working to sell that two store retailer as you are that tier one retailer.[00:06:59] Jeff Roster: Yeah. And so what you see with startups, just getting started as you see founders really being elite salespeople. Right. And if you're trying to establish a business and try to be your lead sales person, that is a really tough call to call on, you know, hundreds of tier two and three far, far better to work with tier one, tier two.[00:07:17] You're seeing retailers that are, are investing in startups, so you can look what Ulta cosmetics is doing. It's just, obviously Walmart's been, it's been doing that forever and Amazon and Target, so you're seeing, you can see probably, five or six. Yeah, probably probably 20 retailers that are aggressively investing in, start the start up community, let alone just, just find service, but literally investment now. And that trend we expect to see really continue and probably accelerate.[00:07:41] Ricardo Belmar: And that's, that's an interesting one to me because one of the things I hear most often from retail tech startups I've talked to is, the difficulty in finding that early investment and the right amount of investment for them to really fulfill the vision they have for the technology and the solution that they're developing. So I find it fascinating to see these larger retailers, like, the Ulta example you gave , for example, because sure Walmart, Amazon, those guys have been doing this for awhile. But we're branching down now into other retailers who are realizing, my best bet may be to invest in these retail tech startups, rather than looking for that clean, polished solution that's been in market for five years, that I'm going to hope that I can talk to at least three other retailer friends of mine who have already implemented this. I'm going to take the chance and invest in this one because I think their vision matches and aligns with what we need. And we'll be the ones to help them bring that solution forward.[00:08:32] Jeff Roster: Well, there's several incubators that are, that clearly that's their strategy. And I fall in love with the idea. I think, literally don't care. what some of my friends at some of the larger software providers, but it would probably argue with me, but I am telling you, there is a lot of innovation happening and we're seeing more and more and more with retailers letting somebody startups get in.[00:08:52] And, and they're literally building tech to spec. So I, you know, I think it's, I think it's really interesting. And then I think we'll see more and more retailers actually acquiring, a startup bringing that tech inside. [00:09:03] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. [00:09:03] We've seen that happen too. Yeah, I agree. . So here's what I think is really interesting and kind of going back to when I asked earlier about the segmenting of this and the targeting of this, because I often see many of these technology solutions as sort of an equalizer in a sense that if I'm that small retailer.[00:09:21] If I have the resources to adopt some of these solution, it may have the effect of putting me on more equal footing to my bigger retail competitors, because it's going to give me capabilities that by virtue of my being small, I can probably get them up and running faster than some of my larger counterparts that have too big an organization to move quickly enough.[00:09:41] And that might give me an advantage. At least even if I'm a local retailer, for example, it gives me an advantage in my local community competing to those big national brands, because I can deploy these things faster and get moving on them faster and reap the benefits of those technologies at a much quicker pace.[00:09:56] Jeff Roster: Yeah. So I wouldn't disagree with that, but you also have the right DNA in the retailer. You have to have a senior leadership team that says I'm okay with this experimentation and the ones that are successful, Walmart certainly, Target absolutely, Ulta absolutely, probably Sephora. I don't know them quite as well.[00:10:14] There there's just a different. They, they are very senior leadership now, not the technology people, but senior leadership are very, very acceptable of our accepting of experimentation risk. Let's throw the dice to a certain degree. We think we can get a big bang for it. And that's what I've been screaming about for 20 years, that we're an industry that needs to embrace that. It's completely unacceptable to say, every technology project has to be successful, you cannot do it.[00:10:40] And I think we're finally getting to that point and we're seeing, clear examples of retailers that are aggressive with tech are winning at the cash register and that's only going to accelerate. And I do think we're going to see a massive split off of retailers that are trying to play too safe and too comfortable.[00:10:57] I'm not going to use the the, a word I'm going to use the apocalypse word, but I mean, they're, self-selecting, you know, they're abroad on the on the. [00:11:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I think if there's anything that that all of these retailers should have come away from the pandemic with, is this understanding that I can't just let things happen to me, right.[00:11:16] I need to be more proactive. And when it comes to the technology, I need to always be searching and looking to understand what's out there. What can I use to solve a challenge? And what can I use? That's going to make my customer experience better. [00:11:28] Jeff Roster: Yep. A hundred percent. And I think that's just going to accelerate it because if you look at the technologies that really were game-changing for retail, BOPIS and we've been talking about BOPIS for what, at least, I dunno, Ricardo five, six years now, right just exploded contactless payments.[00:11:44] Every everything that we were around, we talked a little bit about, we made noise. I mean, they were on, hype cycles and all that good stuff. And all of a sudden we have literally a catastrophic event and acknowledge that we all sort of whisper, whisper, but talked about [00:11:58] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Well, and I think that [00:12:00] Jeff Roster: we're not going back.[00:12:00] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely. And I think maybe the point there was you're right. We've been talking about it. Retailers were talking about it, that there just wasn't the sense of urgency to move quickly. And I think one of the positive things to come from that is that now where projects like this would have in the past would have been looked at as, oh, this is going to be, take at least six to nine months to deploy across all our stores.[00:12:22] Right. And now you have people saying, well, let's see, in 2020, we got that done in six weeks, not six months. So maybe that means we can do these things quickly. We don't have to take six months to get something done. And, and even more so now we can say, well, we got 80% of it done in six weeks. We knew we still had another 20% to go, but we put it out there.[00:12:43] We saw it had impact. It was all positive impact. And by iterating on it, we learned that we can improve it incrementally and eventually get to the a hundred percent we wanted to originally, but we didn't have to wait six months to do it. We spent the six months incrementally improving it and customers were getting the benefit from it upfront and right away.[00:12:59] Jeff Roster: And you'll probably be too polite to say it. But I think to two words really had a big thing to say with that clearly the cloud the fact that we were so, you know, had, have moved so far down the cloud road allowed that rapid rapid acceleration in other words, low code. I think, you know, I think we saw some really interesting examples of retailers being able to do something in six weeks that 10 years ago would have been six months, maybe five years, [00:13:23] Ricardo Belmar: right? Exactly. [00:13:25] Jeff Roster: And Ricardo, the final thing. And I've got to be careful cause I'm on the wrong side of this age curve, but we've always talked about, at least I've talked about for the last 15 years that there has to be a certain point where CIOs have to become very, very comfortable what used to be,[00:13:40] we used to call consumer technology and not expect everything to be dialed. And I think we're, I think if you're looking at, you know, the CIOs that are successful, they're sort of fitting a demographic that says we're more comfortable experimenting with technology. We don't need to have it dialed the way, the way I came up in, you're you're a young guy, so you didn't have that.[00:13:57] But certainly, you know, guys that have been around a while, weren't comfortable with that risk. So you just had, you had probably six variables that all came together to see this acceleration. [00:14:07] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I think, I think survivability. Survivability. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think, I think you're right. And I absolutely, there's no doubt that the maturity of the cloud. I'll put it that way, right. As sort of a nice way of saying it. It's not just that cloud's been available for awhile. Right. And we've had there have been retailers leveraging the cloud for, for many years now, but I think the cloud maturity level is finally recognized in, in retail that it's at the point where I don't have to treat that as consumer technology and think the worst of it, or think that it's not ready for prime time, I can look at it now and say, yes, we can build enterprise grade solutions and we can deploy things that are reliable enough and consistent enough that I can do it quickly and get the same result of what used to take me six months to build that infrastructure.[00:14:51] Jeff Roster: Yeah, absolutely. I'm kind of hoping that's what a NRF 2022 is going to be. It's just a celebration of all the crazy cool products. I mean, [00:14:59] hopefully, hopefully we can... [00:15:01] Ricardo Belmar: hopefully, highlighting what's possible right . Let's talk about, what's possible that we used to think wasn't possible. And what technologies are enabling those possibilities.[00:15:08] And, one, one side effect I see to this, and I think you've talked about this before, too. Once you embrace that, the digital transformation, the innovation in retail takes you to the cloud, we see a shift in spend, right? So the amount of spend that you needed to sustain big infrastructure, big internal infrastructure that you used to require to do these kinds of big projects and, and transformational technologies by shifting them to the cloud,[00:15:34] it's also shifted the spend level, which means now I don't have to ask for the same amount of dollars I needed before I can now spend those dollars on more projects, because I freed up some of that spend that would have gone just to, keeping the lights on, on really heavy grade, big iron infrastructure that now it's all gone in the cloud.[00:15:51] So I don't need to spend that anymore. I can put it on more directly experiential things that I couldn't do before. [00:15:59] Jeff Roster: That's always been my. That whole innovation question's always been my I dunno, my Achilles heel. When I had to drive forecast at Gartner, we had our models, we had our, our IT spend and I kept wondering, gosh, how are we ever going to transform this industry?[00:16:14] When you know, transformational spend was probably five, six, 7% at max of an IT budget, 50% was infrastructure, all of that, you know, 50% non-differentiating infrastructure. And I just wondered how in the heck is this going to happen? And then, then, you know, then the cloud came along and all of a sudden, if I can take 20 or 30% of that 50% spend and just free that up my gosh, that's a lot, that's a lot of mobile point of sale and that's a lot of you know, in-store technology.[00:16:41] And I think that's exactly what we're seeing now. I haven't dug. I don't have to dig into those kinds of numbers anymore, but it'll be interesting to see if we can , if some of the other analyst firms they're still serving that can sort of document that, that transportation out of infrastructure and into transformational spend.[00:16:55] We know it intuitively we can see it. I mean, you can see the evidence of it. Right. And then we'll see if it's, if it's long lasting and I think it is. [00:17:02] Ricardo Belmar: I think so. I think we're going to see this as a trend now that, that, that shift in the spend, I think we'll see two things. One, I think the shift will be longer lasting, but I think we'll see increase in spend.[00:17:13] I think we've seen so far this year, there's been an overall IT spend increase. If I were to predict, , is that going to sustain between now 2025 is every year going to show the same level of increase in IT spend, I think each year will increase. I want to say I forget what the number is, where I've seen on what was being expected for this year, but will it be as much next year?[00:17:31] Maybe, maybe not. I don't think that matters as much, necessarily as the fact that it is going to keep increasing, but I think more important is the shift in spend, you know, to your point where it used to be 50% infrastructure and it won't need to be 50% anymore that frees up more spend that came in applied innovation and new things that can be done.[00:17:48] New iterations it, even if it's of existing things that have been done, those new iterations and the spend on that is going to incrementally improve things all around. [00:17:57] Jeff Roster: Yeah. all the numbers I've seen so far that survey work that's public you know IHL saying I think it's five or 6%. [00:18:03] Ricardo Belmar: I'm going to say 5 to 7% is what I remember.[00:18:05] Jeff Roster: The RIS News study, I think it was, four to 6%. So that's, that's one component. And the other thing too, though, is we moved to the cloud. If we can, and this isn't not going to help my make my services buddies happy, but, for every dollar of software license, it's four to $5 of implementation.[00:18:21] we can move out of that. Low code is a great opportunity to cut some of that integration spend down. I mean, there's, just, there's 15, 20% of an IT budget that , just ripe for transforming from, just really just core non-differentiating into, into transformation.[00:18:38] And I think that's, that's probably going to be the big story of 2022 and 23. [00:18:43] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I, I agree. I think that that's very true and it's going to be about what technologies that shift in spend is going to enable. And I know we've, we've been making a lot of store level examples, but even if I think of digital areas, whether it's just in plain e-commerce right.[00:18:59] And what things you can improve on your website. I'm sure this will come as no shock to you. Jeff, when I say that retailers highlighting the fact that, all of the digital investments they've been making and how that's paying off for them and how they're all going to be a digital first omni-channel retailer going forward driven by data and analytics.[00:19:15] And I chose those words specifically because I can say that there were multiple retailers that use those exact words. [00:19:21] Jeff Roster: They can use whatever words they want. I let's see the action. I, I love the the press release the target point out that I read to you what, a couple of weeks ago, I'm looking for it now where they just basically just slammed the football on the end zone and said 95% 90, a direct, direct quote, 95% of our revenues from is related to the store.[00:19:40] Right. And so, you know, simple, beautiful. And what that means to see what is it? More than 95% of Target's fourth quarter sales were fulfilled by a store that's a direct quote in the press release. And so what that means is that does not mean 95% was done in the store. That's that's, BOPIS, that's a buy online shipt, a shipped from the store, all of the above.[00:19:58] And there was no silly words there that that was, right, old fashioned blocking and tackling. And I love that. [00:20:05] That's probably the greatest press release I think I've ever seen. How cool. Yeah, I [00:20:09] Ricardo Belmar: agree. I, I, I absolutely love that one. And in fact, as I'm looking through some of the folks in the audience who I had a conversation with earlier today, I was using Target as an example, because I look at that outcome that you just read out from their press release.[00:20:24] I would draw the dots back to when they first started doing target drive up, right. Their curbside pickup, which to be fair, they started that not during the pandemic they already had things in motion to do that long before anybody had heard of COVID, to implement that as an additional convenience service, because Target had already been moving in this direction of store-based fulfillment. But if you were to ask the question, is curbside in and of itself, digital transformation is that really innovative and transformative? And I would answer that if I look at Target as an example, the transformational component of it, isn't curbside by itself. It's how that enabled them to achieve that 95% fulfillment from stores, number that you just read in their press release.[00:21:06] That to me is really powerful and transformative. [00:21:09] Jeff Roster: And it's even better than that. It's that the transformation is that the DNA in the organization to say, let's start experimenting way ahead of the and let's understand what it takes to do it, and how do we execute it. And then all this nightmare that we've all lived through descends on the world.[00:21:25] And some retailers said, we're ready to go. And let's. And others faltered. And that will be the, that will be the story. Along with all the tragedy, there's, there's some, there's some amazing stories and it's, it's all about the DNA. And it's got to go up to the CEO. They have to be comfortable operating in an environment where their technology people can experiment and we to get away from this.[00:21:49] And I think we are, we're still plenty of examples, but, but I'm seeing more and more, I'm hearing more and more, from tech executives say, you know, I'm getting the green light increasingly I'm getting the green light and stories, like, you know, that this target press release and, Walmart and Amazon just really adds fuel to the fire.[00:22:05] You have to, you don't have to spend big to experiment, but you have to have a different DNA. And that's, that's the shift I think that we all need to really, at least those of us in that, in the communication that's really need to push going forward. You don't have to be fancy, but you have to, you have to be innovative.[00:22:22] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And, and you're right. It does require that experimentation mentality and realization that you don't need any one of these things to be a silver bullet. What you really looking for is how many new innovative things can I do and manage and produce a positive outcome that moves the business forward.[00:22:38] I think that's a corporate culture kind of approach that that is starting to build and, and we see more and more that we didn't see before. And I think that's something that is going to have a tremendous impact in how technology gets used by retailers going forward.[00:22:53] Jeff Roster: You you've probably said in as many different sessions as I have about, how do we how do we empower our, our leadership teams, our tech teams? Well, you got to let them take credit. You got to let them get up and be able to talk about basic technologies and not think everything is so super secret.[00:23:07] It's it's been a curse for this industry. Every other industry, when I sat at Gartner , my colleagues in my practice were in manufacturing, were in healthcare, were in financial services. And when I talked to those analysts, they couldn't believe the fact that it was so hard for retail and be able to say anything about anything.[00:23:24] Ricardo Belmar: Right. [00:23:24] Jeff Roster: I mean, we really, probably the only industry that that's so penalizes technology executives [00:23:30] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, [00:23:30] Jeff Roster: go look at the old Gartner symposiums. You never saw a retailer there because they couldn't come and talk.[00:23:35] Ricardo Belmar: Right. [00:23:35] Jeff Roster: And say anything. [00:23:36] Ricardo Belmar: Right. [00:23:36] Jeff Roster: And that's, that has to change. I'm not saying you give up your, secret sauce, but I'm not sure talking about a BOPIS project is really, that big of a deal at this point, but allowing your team to take credit for it and to stand up on a national stage and say.[00:23:49] Ricardo Belmar: Right. [00:23:50] Jeff Roster: What we did, and this is how we executed it. [00:23:51] Ricardo Belmar: Right. And here's the result[00:23:53] Jeff Roster: and here's the result. Come on. I mean you have to...[00:23:55] Ricardo Belmar: I completely agree you're, you're absolutely right. That, that has been lacking over the years in retail. I love seeing that when you see it posted now, in fact, I'll, I'll give some credit, [00:24:03] so I think Tractor Supply is really good at that. I've seen many times, where I'll find, even in social media, like on LinkedIn or on Twitter, I'll see a post from an exec at Tractor Supply, highlighting everybody who's on the team, this wonderful new project they just finished, how they rolled it out to all, you know, 15, 1800 store locations and how massive an impact it's had.[00:24:23] And everyone celebrates that. And you see, the hundreds of people that click the like button on that one, because they see the impact and the result. There's no reason to be afraid to talk of these things. I look at this and I say this to people and say, What are you afraid of actually, because if what you're thinking is you're giving away the fact that you're considering this technology.[00:24:42] I'll say to someone, let's think of that through though, because there are a dozens of people providing that technology, right? You're you're now in a position where you're trying to evaluate from dozens down to maybe three to get to one, do you think maybe there are other retailers, even some who compete with you for in the same categories that are also evaluating the same 12 technology vendors, trying to get down to three, to get down to one, to a deployment, the fact is you're not alone.[00:25:07] These are not things that you're looking at in a vacuum and that no one else out there knows exists. That's not where you're going to get your advantage from. You're going to get your advantage from the results produced by having this technology deployed, if you do it right. Which means that the differentiator for you as a retail brand comes from how you execute it.[00:25:26] And how successful you deploy it. And everyone deploys it somewhat differently because every retailer is not cookie cutter. One is different from the next, but the fact that you both use the same technology platform to roll out curbside pickup, that's really not a problem. [00:25:40] You're not going to lose anything because someone realizes that, oh, these two retailers use the same technology partner for that. That's okay. It's okay to collaborate. I mean, let's go one step further. We're both participating in activities that are designed to be sort of a neutral environment where retailers and technology providers, startups, everybody in the ecosystem can come together and collaborate on how to address these business challenges.[00:26:04] It's okay to do that. And I think you're absolutely right that historically this was not an industry that wanted to do that. That wanted to be that collaborative. But I always find it surprising that as big an industry as retail is when you get down to the people that are making these decisions and evaluating these technologies.[00:26:23] It tends to feel like a small world because you do tend to run into if you've been in the industry long enough you run into the same people from time to time, people move around, they go to different organizations, but there's no reason not to collaborate on the core pieces and understanding how do you address the challenge.[00:26:39] You may have a different detail in how you solve it, even if you're solving it in the same way as the next retailer, but trying to keep it a secret is not going to give you the advantage. [00:26:47] Jeff Roster: Yeah. I've never been able to quantify this, but in, late evening conversations at NRF and whatnot , with retail execs , there's a pretty good sense that technology and retail is more expensive because of that.[00:26:58] You don't see that in other verticals, you see different other operators in other verticals, saying, technology's non-differentiating, let's figure out how to do it cheap, and then we'll compete on our services and what not. You don't see that you don't see that in retail and that's, that's a real problem and that needs to change because that makes everything more expensive, harder to do.[00:27:18] You're not giving people the credit for doing cool things. And it just mucks up our whole industry. I think that's changing. I hope, I hope, and I'm doing everything I possibly can to, to brag on retailers that want to be publicly challenged, where we possibly can, but that has to change.[00:27:34] And we'll just, we'll continually be just training executives for other industries because they just get frustrated with ours and that's where we need to go. And I think that's where we're finally starting to do that. And if that's something that comes out of, out of COVID, well, that's one good thing in a sea of horribleness. [00:27:50] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, absolutely. Promoting that collaborative aspect and, and recognizing the accomplishments openly and publicly, I think are key, key factors for that. [00:28:00] So Jeff, why don't we talk about some different specific types and kinds of technologies and where we think they're headed and the impact on innovation. You recently have done on your podcast, some discussions around AI and where AI is going. Traditionally I would say up until the pandemic, I would claim the majority of the AI discussion. You always heard kind of centered around areas, tied to supply chain optimization, maybe around forecasts. And obviously your predictive capabilities there.[00:28:28] what's your thought on where AI is going to go next in retail? [00:28:32] Jeff Roster: So when you start looking at forecast for AI spend, I mean, if they're just unbelievable, they're massively large numbers. And so if you talk to the folks in the space, they're working with AI, there's, there's literally nowhere it's not going. We just did a pod where we've talked about safety or, or AI and loss prevention, helping to which is good and bad because there's a lot of risks there because, we talked about the bias in AI, but as far as assessing risks, looking for guns, knives, whatnot, you know, facial recognition, all that sort of stuff.[00:29:00] It's, it's pretty interesting. And to be honest, a little scary it's certainly going, and then by the way, you add voice on top of that also. And so there's, already some startups where we're analyzing the intensity of a voice call. So, it'll help our client services folks.[00:29:15] And then probably it's only a matter of time before we're probably putting mikes on the retail, floor there to sense out, how things are going, which also might be a little scary. There's really there's nowhere that it's not going to go Ricardo. That's what's so transformative about this.[00:29:29] Ricardo Belmar: There's just so much potential and where it can go. One of my favorite , customer facing examples that I'll often talk about with a number of retail tech providers is in how we can improve all of these various product recommendation engines that are out there.[00:29:45] I mean, I I've lost count how many times I see online people joking about the latest, crazy recommendation they got for an unrelated product when they went to Amazon. And it's not just unique to Amazon, right? This happens on plenty of e-commerce sites where you get a strange recommendations that you look at them and say, well, that has absolutely no relevance to me.[00:30:03] I think of in apparel specifically, I've often talked about examples where I'm waiting for the retailer who's going to add a capability in their app to help keep track of everything that's in my closet and not just determine how to put things together, but how I can put things together that I already own with things that they're selling or new products that they have coming in so that you can even pre-order them and have the AI do more intelligent recommendations that way.[00:30:27] Because this is something I know it can be done with the technologies today. And there are at least a couple of tech providers. I know that are building this now. So I'm still waiting for which retailer is going to do that first, because I think there's lots of potential for that. Especially if you think about that in terms of a customer loyalty app and, things you can enhance the relationship that way but particularly around, pre-orders , and other related things you can do that just makes the relationship better because now you'll associate those life improvements around fashion and style in your, in your wardrobe with that retail brand.[00:30:59] And I, I tend to think of this as one of the things when people ask the question, why do people like to buy Apple iPhones? And you always see Apple leaning towards discussions around how it makes your life better. It has nothing to do with the individual features, right. It doesn't have to do with the individual technology it's, how does it make your every day better by having this device?[00:31:18] And that's what they build on. I think that AI is one of those technologies that will help retailers do something very similar, because if you think about it, I would claim, that everyone has a handful of retail brands that are much more deeply tied to their everyday lives and even their smartphone device because of who they go to to get a number of different products and services.[00:31:38] But you probably don't think of them that way, because it's just transactional to you. And I think AI is one of those foundational innovation tools that retailers are going to use to change that brand relationship.[00:31:49] Jeff Roster: Yeah. 100%, you can point to some really interesting example, both that Ulta and I believe also Sephora are doing around magic mirrors that are smart enough to analyze skin tones, which is not being a user of that product. I don't totally understand, but the technology behind it is fascinating.[00:32:05] So you can easily point out to some really interesting early examples. And I guess the nice thing about being an analyst is I can look at a trajectory and say, I can see all the mistakes and yeah, they're funny and I laugh. Haha. But I don't care. As long as we're experimenting, as long as, we're pushing the ball forward.[00:32:20] As long as I see your trajectory and I see value, it's all good.[00:32:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. Absolutely agree. [00:32:25] Let me take this opportunity to bring Casey into the discussion. Welcome Casey. Thanks for making it today. [00:32:32] Casey Golden: Hi, it's an exciting time. There's been a lot of news happening lately. A lot of the exciting things happening in retail these days. [00:32:39] Ricardo Belmar: So one thing I want to bring you into right, right off the start. So Jeff and I have been talking before about level of spend towards digital transformation innovation, and how spend was shifting from based on a need that there's less requirement to spend as much on infrastructure.[00:32:56] And that frees up the ability to spend on more innovation. And that led us to a point about where startups are being leveraged by retailers. And one thing that we sort of touched on, but didn't go in deeper and I know you have some interesting thoughts around this and that's how startups are getting the funding they need in retail tech and how they're able to get those first few customers to drive the kind of innovation that, that we're all talking about here.[00:33:21] And Jeff had brought up an interesting point about how now we have retailers who are starting to invest in these companies because they see the potential in the technology and the solution. And that that's one new avenue that wasn't there before. But I wanted to kind of get your take on, on what you see in the, in the retail tech landscape around new innovative technologies and where you think retail tech providers are getting the funding they need, and it's going to help them complete these solutions and get them in front of retailers between now and 2025.[00:33:49] Casey Golden: Yeah, well, retail tech has always been a difficult conversation to have with Silicon valley. But I have to say that it's definitely improving on it's now at the forefront. The next unicorns I firmly believe will be a group of five to probably five to 10 retail tech companies, because that's just where the most growth is because of digital transformation.[00:34:14] And this is the first time that retailers have put it as the primary budget and initiative that's moving forward. If you would've talked to me, like, two days ago, I probably would have had something else to say, but I mean, I've just gotten off the phone with a lot of different investment funds.[00:34:29] That absolutely surprised me on their interest and acumen, in the retail space that has improved over the last 12 months. So it's getting very interesting. Having brands and companies invest in a tech startup does create some difficulties as far as having a brand use a piece of software that a competitor's invested in and information rights.[00:34:55] And then also just having that entity as an owner there are people that are moving off of customer just because Facebook acquired it. Right. So does brand a want to spend their money with a piece of software that brand B is, is making money off the backend of Going to be interesting on how you play those strategic relationships.[00:35:19] Personally, I'm staying away from corporate investment. But I do know some other people that have taken it from like a, a Farfetch or an LVMH or some sort, it does open yourself up. If you're looking to be acquired, if that's your goal definitely sets you up for that. So I think it'll definitely be an interesting space. I think retail tech companies will get funded in the next 24 months. There's a lot of people that have sophisticated software in market that has just been stuck in long sales cycles. So, it's not that these are, there's a lot of new companies where you're feeling like you're putting an MVP on to your, into your company.[00:35:57] There's a lot of established and mature software out there that can support enterprise accounts and can implement and, and move forward. But I'm actually bullish for the first time. Since I've started my startup.[00:36:09] Consultants that I feel that have the greatest opportunity to implement technology because they're known they have relationships, they understand the technical requirements and they can dig under the hood. And they've seen a lot of different pieces of software and can easily look at apples versus oranges and get into the technical details and the implementation details to really define if you sign this contract, this is what you're getting into.[00:36:43] And I think that retail consultants right now should be leveraged by every single brand and startup to be able to connect those dots. And it's worked really well for me. And I trust the retail consultants. because That's their business, right? Their business is to be that go-between person and make sure that the implementations are successful.[00:37:05] That's what they built their reputation on. [00:37:06] Ricardo Belmar: That's an excellent point. Yeah. In fact, we were talking earlier about the improving situation in retail, around collaboration. I think you just brought up an excellent example of leveraging the consultants and other let's call it third-party experts, that have good, useful, tangible knowledge that they're trying to share, right? [00:37:28] Casey Golden: Yeah. The trusted advisors that can dig under the hood and have those technical conversations where you're not necessarily talking to a CTO, you're talking to somebody that has reviewed 25 platforms in detail and understands the entire supply chain across, you know, 25 different types of brands and organizations and understand.[00:37:50] Who everybody actually is. There's a lot of vaporware. [00:37:54] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, yeah, [00:37:56] yeah. You're absolutely right. Yeah. You, you, you do often need as a retailer, help with someone to help you kind of cut through the clutter. Right. And get through all the noise that's out there, which admittedly plenty of, of tech vendors out there help generate, but with good intentions, but it's there and, and everyone could use some help in leveraging that.[00:38:17] And I think that's one area where it we're absolutely the collaboration should continue to improve. And, and if I were to make, turn that into a, a 20, 25 prediction, I'd say, we're going to see more and more consultants and trusted advisors, you know, choose your label on what you want to call it, but I'll, I'll call them independent experts.[00:38:34] So to speak or, or neutral parties that can help bring. The technology providers, the retailers, et cetera, everybody else together in a meaningful way that adds value whether it's through direct relationship and networking or because you have access to a platform, it could be a platform and an academic institution.[00:38:52] It could be an industry association, but I think all of those areas are going to increase their type of influence for the better of the of the industry. [00:39:01] Casey Golden: And I think that that's, yeah, that's going to be the key indicator is if you're not investing in software and technology and thinking about retail a little bit differently There's going to be some, some giants that can fall.[00:39:15] And there there's opportunity for a lot of innovative growth in ways that we maybe only dreamt of some, some companies and brands are going to be able to move 10 years and another, and some others will maybe fall, fall back another five. We could have some really surprising results. If we get a lot more venture capital involved in retail technology, there could be some crazy results.[00:39:42] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I think there's, there's definitely some truth to that. And maybe a lot of it has to do with, like we were just saying, what do you define as retail? When we talk about those kinds of predictions and forecasts and what are you calling digital transformation. You know what what's being included in those two definitions, didn't come up with numbers like that.[00:39:59] But I think your point is right though, that we are going to see you over the next few years. This is going to be a, a, almost a, a dividing factor, right? Those that are investing in these areas regardless of what the actual number is, but where the investment is going in this digital transformation, that's going to separate the leaders from the laggards, and it's going to separate the successful retailers from the ones that aren't gonna survive.[00:40:23] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, I'm happy that I'm, not working at a brand right now. I don't think I'd sleep any, any, I probably wouldn't sleep any more than I do now, but it's different not sleeping for somebody else's company. [00:40:37] Ricardo Belmar: There you go. [00:40:38] There you go. [00:40:40] Casey Golden: There's a lot going on, I think right [00:40:42] Ricardo Belmar: now.[00:40:42] Yeah, that that's, that's absolutely true. It's an interesting times. [00:40:45] Yeah. I mean, it, it speaks to corporate culture, absolutely speaks to the culture. You know, I was in a conversation earlier today talking about what are the hurdles, to tech adoption for a lot of retailers.[00:40:56] It's that, that, that culture or mentality around how technology is used, it has to, has to come from the top down, right? To make sure that there is this favorable outlook on experimenting, which we talked about earlier. You know, this desire to whether you call it fail fast, whether you call it iterating on a, technology deployment, all of those things have to come together and it has to be brought into the DNA.[00:41:19] If you're not an organization, that's going to be willing to do those things. You're not going to be able to advance with techn ology [00:41:26] Jeff Roster: Yeah, that really sounds like an interesting room that we have to do or, or somebody to do. What's the, what's the organizational DNA to not be called a legacy retailer. Cause I mean, it's known, we know, I intuitively I know exactly what it is, but I don't think, I don't think I've necessarily really seen it put to [00:41:41] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. Kind of spelled out. Yeah. You know, organically spelled out. [00:41:44] And how do you change? Right. If you are a legacy retailer, how do you make that change? How do you make that mind shift change? Other than you're bringing in a new CEO, [00:41:52] Jeff Roster: I didn't want to say it, but it's real easy to do a walk, either change a walk, there's just no way around it.[00:41:58] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely true. There are answers and some of them are hard, tough answers, but they are out there for those legacy organizations.[00:42:06] All right. Well, I'm gonna take this moment to thank everyone for joining us today. I think this was a great discussion around digital transformation and innovation and the future of retail. I'm sure we could go on for another hour and we may do a follow-up session to this one because I am already thinking of other areas just apart from the culture question that we just hit on that we could talk about.[00:42:26] You know, that would really give us some, some room to discuss where, where things are going with retail tech in the future. So Jeff ,Casey, any final closing thoughts from you?[00:42:36] Casey Golden: Well, thanks Ricardo. I apologies for being, being late. I know I missed a lot of good conversation, but thank you as always for, including me into the conversation. And I hope everybody has a really good week. [00:42:48] Ricardo Belmar: And thank you, Casey, for joining us. Jeff, thank you for another stimulating discussion on a topic that's near and dear to all of our hearts in this industry.[00:42:56] Any final thoughts from you, [00:42:57] Jeff Roster: just you know, it's, there's just no question that retailers have to be serious about, about the next four or five years. I mean, I will never ever use the apocalypse term, but there is going to be a thinning of the herd. There's no doubt about it. [00:43:11] Ricardo Belmar: And I'll, echo that sentiment that again, without using the, the, a word as Jeff pointed out, I think that as a retailer, you have to be thinking about and committing to how you're going to invest in retail tech to move your business further over the next few years, because the bottom line answer is if you don't, one of your competitors will, and you won't be around to see them. I think that's the sort of the shocking conclusion that everyone has to come to. And it's not because of any sort of apocalyptic situation. It's just because that's the nature of the business. And if you don't follow along and down that path, then you're the path you will end up on is going to be pretty clear.[00:43:52] But if you don't make the appropriate investments, and I think going back to something Casey said earlier with the industry experts and consultants that are out there, there is an army of people to really help you make those decisions and those choices. And I would even go so far as to say there are number of folks here in the audience right now who are in that same situation, looking to help people in the industry make these choices because at the end of the day, [00:44:16] the fact is we're all consumers, right? So from that point of view, need retailers to succeed to some level. So again, I think the final closing thought here from all of us that we all agree on is the future for retail is in digital transformation and innovation. And if you're not investing in that, you're probably not going to be part of the conversation in the future.[00:44:34] But if you are then more power to you, when we all look forward to seeing what great things you're going to come up with as a retailer. And on that note, I think we'll close this room out and I want to thank everybody for joining us and hope that you come back next week and join us for another interesting retail tech predictions, 2025 discussion.[00:44:53] Thanks everyone. Have a great weekend. [00:44:55] Casey Golden: Thanks everyone. [00:44:56] Recap Discussion[00:44:56] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome back everybody. I hope our listeners enjoyed that deep dive into digital transformation and innovation retail, as much as we did.[00:45:07] Casey Golden: And unlike our last few episodes. I'm sure our listeners enjoyed that it didn't go over an hour. [00:45:12] Ricardo Belmar: I think the one bit of feedback we're definitely not getting on the show so far is that our episodes need to be longer.[00:45:21] Casey Golden: So Ricardo, I think there were five key points in that discussion to take away. One how startups are factoring into digital transformation initiatives, two how successful innovation culture starts at the executive level with the C-suite team. Third, digital transformation leads to a big shift in IT spend, moving more and more towards innovation just keeping the existing systems up and updated, leading to more experiential moments. I don't think we can deny that AI is leading the way and innovating in pretty much every area of retail right now. And finally, the important value of industry experts and consultants guiding retailers on this transformation journey, really getting that outside viewpoint. [00:46:08] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I agree. I think those really are the top takeaways. let's take the first one, we talked a little bit in the session about the startup community and this has come up in some of our previous sessions too, and we talked about a role academia has in retail, we had a little bit of discussion there about how they're a great neutral ground to bring startups into the ecosystem.[00:46:27] But if we just think about how many retail tech startups there are now, and you've obviously got some expertise in this area and you know, It makes such a difference introducing retailers to new ideas and new ways of doing things. I think so many retailers, especially let's face it, the ones that have been around the longest, we always like to talk about legacy retailers.[00:46:47] Some have really struggled in that area because their organizations are so siloed or it's just inherent in their culture to think about things in the same way a startup does. And so bringing startups in. To help with that makes a huge, huge difference. And I think there are some retailers that have been doing an amazing job of this.[00:47:06] And you look for example, at Ulta beauty, right? They going as far as investing in some retail tech startups help with that. Nike, I think has done the same thing. They've gone even further than that and acquired some of those startup companies so they can really gain the technology.[00:47:19] But I think if we were to make the short list of really successful retailers coming out of the pandemic, it's the ones who've really embraced that startup culture [00:47:27] Casey Golden: I agree. And a lot of that just comes from understanding that retail tech startups are just fundamentally built differently. very software first. they're focused on solving a problem, not necessarily services co building so much as we understand the problem. And we are going to spend a year digging into actually solving the problem and building software that works, which is just right out of the box, which is just fundamentally different than historically retail technology companies make money and run. [00:48:04] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's so true. You could even say it helps with that entire culture around experimentation. And the need to, to be willing, to take the risks on experimenting on new things and accepting that not all of them are going to work and that's okay. long as you quickly recover from that and move on to the next thing.[00:48:20] I think that also relates to maybe this is part of that second takeaway you mentioned about innovation culture starting at the top. If management and the executive team can't accept that it's okay to fail on some of these things when you're experimenting, if they can't accept that, it's okay to get from outside organizations, you're really gonna put a crimp on that innovation culture.[00:48:42] And it's really going to be tough for anybody in these individual teams to really get their ideas across[00:48:48] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean, nobody wants to get someone else fired, and, really making sure like when those startups go in, are these innovation programs? So much is built around success in defining what success is. everybody wants that, that project to be successful. But really about the way that they look at measuring, it's great experiences may not be rolled out through the entire organization.[00:49:12] It might just be this small moment in one location. And most of the population may not even see it before that's, rolled out. [00:49:19] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. That's so true. Absolutely. Like we said, in the main discussion that this, it has to start at the top, you have to have leaders in the executive team that embrace this whole process and the whole idea of how innovation should work. they really need to lead.[00:49:33] that way, and then if they do, then they're all the teams will follow because what I think a lot of retailers miss is that they've got people who have great ideas, whether it's internal or whether they identify a startup to work with from our first takeaway. They know they have ideas, they know what they want to try, and the key is letting them try. I think this also ties into that third point you mentioned about the IT budgets and where that IT spend is going. We talked before about how, spend overall at the retailers isn't always even coming from the it group now. There are other business functional areas that are spending on technology because it's so pervasive, but IT traditionally in retailers has been focused on either building up the right infrastructure.[00:50:12] And we're not saying. The wrong thing to do, but what we're really here is that the more successful retailers have that while they got to keep doing that and sure they have to spend some money on keeping things up and running upgrades and so forth. There's gotta be some budget reserve for all of these new experimental innovative things[00:50:33] their are other teams are going to bring in and that may mean more IT spend. And I think the trend is there. seen it in last year. We're seeing it this year. I've seen more IT spend increases than I've ever seen before. retailers, it was traditionally an industry that doesn't like to do that much incremental increase in it budget year over year.[00:50:51] But I think over the years, whether it's being scared that Amazon is going to enter your product category and steal a lot of share or whether it's just, awakening that if you're going to be competitive, you've got to spend more on the right kind of technology used the right way. It's not just about bringing technology in right.[00:51:07] It's in how you use it and where you put it.[00:51:09] Casey Golden: Yeah. and it's expensive. know, this is, this has been a constant for brands to spend money and budget, significant amount of their annual sales to reinvest into digital and innovation.[00:51:26] These are the biggest budgets we've ever seen. [00:51:28] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And one of those ways, the fourth thing you mentioned is how pervasive AI technologies have become now. We used to hear about this primarily in areas like in forecasting and the supply chain and a lot of operational areas. But now really we can point to AI use cases in just about every corner of the retail business at whether it's customer facing associate facing, whether it's internal on the backend and front of house, wherever it may be.[00:51:56] We're just seeing it everywhere. And I think that really has pushed a lot of new experimentation and a lot of new innovation. And we might even be able to say that's led the way in part to what's allowed for an increase in that it budget spend.[00:52:12] Casey Golden: Yeah, you got to prove it. And hardest things to be able to do to get a lot of these projects budgeted is to prove that there's some type of bottom line bonus, or some type of ROI. Really helped validate some of these projects that people want to work. [00:52:32] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think that absolutely no doubt about that. And this ties into the last point, you mentioned that validate that you're doing this the right way, well, what better way to do that than by learning from others? It in what I feel is a strong growth mindset for a lot of retailers that recognize that have to have all the answers internally. only is it okay to bring in those startups that are doing innovative and interesting new things, but it's okay to rely on industry experts and consultants who are getting as much experience as you may as a retailer, but they're seeing it across multiple retailers.[00:53:03] They're being brought in brands in multiple areas . can share those learnings. You're bringing those experts in because they've seen things you haven't, and you want to benefit from that. So it's, basically taking what others built and building on that to your advantage.[00:53:18] And I think historically retailers have considered that a competitive disadvantage, but I think that was to their disadvantage in fact competing on whether. You use a technology that your competitive brand does not use. You're really competing on how you use it the impact that technology has on your operations and your customer experience.[00:53:39] And once you understand that you also then understand that it's okay to collaborate. It's okay to learn from others. And therefore it's okay to bring in those outside experts to let them share their experience with you.[00:53:49] Casey Golden: A hundred percent. I mean, I have been continually impressed by the pulse that consultants have on the tech space right now. what everybody's doing. They understand how clients are using it. Working with these vendors and pushing them to really find these innovative solutions that kind of push the boundaries because any retail consultant on who we know has been in this business for, over a decade, they've seen it all![00:54:21] They know how we really work. So having these consultants just kind of dig in, they know what's going to get the job done and what, what has gaps. And I just think it's very, very important to lean on them because they're following what everyone is doing, that is their business.[00:54:39] And there'll be able to come up with solutions that fit a business or category. [00:54:44] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, a hundred percent. I think that that's so true. And one of the, the good thing is, I think we're seeing is just, as you said, and more retailers are recognizing that that's a helpful way to go and it's the right way to go. And I think the industry is recognizing that, quick shout out to the team at rethink retail for doing a great job, collecting a list of who are all the top influencers. And when you look at that list, the number of consultants and other experts in there that retailers can rely on is pretty significant now. Well, Casey, I think on that note, it may be time to close out this episode of show.[00:55:14] It is that time. So with that note, we will close this one out and another one in the books![00:55:19] Show Close[00:55:19] Casey Golden: If you enjoyed our show, please consider giving us a five-star rating and review on Apple podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. Want to know more about what we talked about today? Take a look at the show notes for handy links and more deets.[00:55:36] I'm your cohost, Casey Golden[00:55:38] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter at retail razor on LinkedIn and on our YouTube channel for video versions of each episode and the occasional bonus content. [00:55:53] I'm your host Ricardo Belmar[00:55:54] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us. [00:55:55] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail, if you cut through the clutter. Until next time, THIS is the Retail Razor Show.[00:56:05]

S1E5 – The Retail Avengers & The Sea of AcademiaWelcome to Season 1, Episode 5, the fifth ever episode of The Retail Razor Show!I’m your host, Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and lead partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.And I’m your co-host, Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock and slayer of retail frankenstacks!Together, we’re your guides on the retail transformation journey. Whether you're thinking digital and online, mobile, or brick & mortar stores, we’ll help you cut through the clutter!For episode 5 we’re tackling an issue that doesn’t get as much attention as it should – the role of academics and universities in the retail industry!We have two special guests joining us. Gautham Vadakkepatt, director of the Center for Retail Transformation at George Mason University’s School for Business. Plus fan favorite, Ron Thurston, author of the book, Retail Pride – The Guide to Celebrating Your Accidental Career.Listen to our Clubhouse session with Gautham and Ron where we discuss how academia can change the perception of retail for students - our up-and-coming next generation of retailers! We also consider what contributions university centers can make to retail tech, particularly in the startup community as well as how research plays a role in furthering the spread of knowledge in the retail ecosystem.You can learn more about the Center for Retail Transformation on their website. For more information about Ron’s book and his upcoming Retail in America tour, visit his website.And big news! Our podcast has made it to the Feedspot Top 50 Retail podcasts list! We recently hit #20, so please do give us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts or Spotify Podcasts if you like the show to help us grow! With your help, we’ll be a Top 10 podcast soon enough! Check it out here: https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/The Retail Razor ShowFollow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazorConnect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazorJoin our club on Clubhouse: http://bit.ly/RRazorClubListen to us on Callin: https://bit.ly/RRCallinSubscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTubeSubscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShowRetail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPodHost → Ricardo Belmar,Follow on Twitter - ****https://bit.ly/twRBelmarConnect on LinkedIn - ****https://bit.ly/LIRBelmarRead my comments on RetailWire - ****https://bit.ly/RWRBelmarCo-host → Casey Golden,Follow on Twitter - ****https://bit.ly/twCaseyConnect on LinkedIn - ****https://bit.ly/LICaseyRead my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCaseyTRANSCRIPTS1E5 The Retail Avengers & The Sea of Academia[00:00:20] Introduction[00:00:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hello. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. No matter what time of day you're listening. Welcome. Welcome to the retail razor show. I'm your host Ricardo Belmar a RETHINK Retail top 100 retail influencer and lead partner marketing advisor for retail and consumer goods at Microsoft.[00:00:35] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host Casey Golden CEO of Luxe lock and been obsessed with the customer relationship between a brand and a consumer and slaying, Frankenstacks [00:00:44] Ricardo Belmar: I love hearing how many Frankenstacks you've slain every time, Casey, how many since the last episode?[00:00:49] Casey Golden: Well, we're still working on three. It does take a minute.[00:00:52] Ricardo Belmar: Well, yeah, I guess it does take a minute. That's not bad. Considering we had a holiday break in there too. Right? So not too bad, not too bad. I wonder how many listeners would have guessed. I keep waiting to see if there are any tweets they're going to start flying out to us with everybody guessing before the next episode, how many Franken stacks get slain?[00:01:11] So do I, or do I, anybody listening or watching on YouTube will look out for the tweet storm of guesses and we'll give you a shout out if anybody comes close to the right number.[00:01:19] Casey Golden: So last week, Ricardo, we had a special guest dedicated to celebrating retail ROI, probably one of the most moving podcast episodes in 2021. [00:01:29] Ricardo Belmar: . Without a doubt, anyone that missed that one definitely go back, give it a listen. I'm sure you'll be as moved and inspired as we were. [00:01:35] Casey Golden: Well at this time, we've got another hot topic.[00:01:38] Don't we? And not one, but two special guests joined us on clubhouse to talk about our super cool, but often underrated subject, how academics support retail. [00:01:48] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. This session was a long time in the making, for our listeners out there, who aren't aware I'm on the advisory council to George Mason University's Center for Retail Transformation, along with a couple of our retail Avengers team members, Jeff Roster, and Shish Shridhar.[00:02:03] And we invited the center's director, Gautham Vadakkepatt to join the show. So we could deep dive into how academics and university programs help the retail industry and not just retailers, but the whole ecosystem.. [00:02:15] Casey Golden: And back with us again. Fan favorite, Ron Thurston, author of retail pride. The guide to celebrating your accidental career also joined us because this iOS is a topic near and dear to our hearts too.[00:02:29] Ricardo Belmar: So we zeroed in on three main topics for the discussion, preparing the next generation of retailers, also known as students supporting an environment for startups now, also near and dear to our hearts and for creating, a neutral ground for industry research. [00:02:42] Casey Golden: There's so much ground to cover in these areas.[00:02:45] And I can't wait to share what Gautham and Ron had to say, let's get to it. [00:02:49] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely. So without further delay, let's listen to the retail Avengers and the sea of academia.The Retail Avengers and the Sea of Academia on Clubhouse[00:03:02] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome everybody to the Retail Razor room. We're talking today about what we call the sea of academia, and we're going to be taking a deep dive into the role that universities and academics play in the future of retail.[00:03:20] We're going to focus on three areas and we'll get to that in a moment, but we have a couple of guest speakers with us this week, who I want to first let them introduce themselves. And then we'll do quick intros for the usual team and jump right in. Gautham why don't you introduce yourself first. [00:03:34] Gautham Vadakkepatt: Thank you Ricardo for having me.[00:03:36] My name is Gautham Vadakkepatt. I'm the associate professor in the school of business at George Mason University and the director for the Center for Retail Transformation at George Mason. [00:03:46] Ricardo Belmar: Great, thank you. And then we also have a returning special guest to our room here, Ron Thurston. Ron?[00:03:51] Ron Thurston: Sure. Thanks Ricardo.. Really happy to be here and always love any of these conversations. My name is Ron Thurston. I'm the author of retail pride and a long time retail leader. And most recently as the vice president of stores of Intermix and head of stores for several brands prior.[00:04:08] And I spend much of my time now consulting and speaking, and really celebrating the millions of people who do the hard work and stories every day. And in education may play a part in that, which is why I was so interested in joining this conversation. [00:04:23] So thanks, Ricardo. [00:04:25] Ricardo Belmar: Great. Thanks, Ron. And moving on to our regular Retail Avengers team, I'll start with what's on my screen at least is our ghost speaker. Jeff, because I can't see you on my screen for some reason. [00:04:37] Jeff Roster: Hi, jeff roster. Co-host of This Week In Innovation and serve on several advisory boards. Most, most proudly the center for retail transformation with George Mason University. And I'm so happy to have my boss there, here tonight.[00:04:49] Looking forward to hearing what he has got to say. [00:04:51] Ricardo Belmar: Excellent and Casey. [00:04:53] Casey Golden: Hi, I'm Casey Golden. I'm the founder of Luxlock retail experience platform, a former fashion exec and supply chain management tech.[00:05:03] Ricardo Belmar: Maybe Shish is having a little bit of an issue. We'll come back to him in a minute. And I'm Ricardo Belmar, the host of the room. I created the Retail Razor Club here on Clubhouse. I'm a lead partner marketing advisor for retail at Microsoft, and also proud to be on the advisory council at George Mason University's Center for Retail Transformation as is Jeff, and also equally happy to have Gautham here to talk to us about what I think is a tremendously interesting topic that probably doesn't get as much attention as it should.[00:05:33] I think in this industry particularly around what I'm going to introduce as our first topic for discussion here and that's how we introduce fresh talent and skills into the retail workforce and what role universities have in that. So it's not a new concept, of course, that universities have had retail programs and curriculums in the past, there are number of universities that do.Preparing the next-gen of retailers - students![00:05:55] Ricardo Belmar: I claim that there's a bit of a misperception in what those programs are meant to do and that many people believe that they're really there just to produce more merchandisers and more buyers who are ultimately going to get hired perhaps by a department store brand and take on one of those roles, which at the end of the day, I think is really not what the industry is looking for from an academic environment.[00:06:17] And I would argue that that's more a perception than it is a reality, but I'm going to, I'm going to stop there and ask Gautham to tell us about what you really think the reality of this situation is and why there is this perception.[00:06:30] Gautham Vadakkepatt: Well, thank you, Ricardo, for giving me the chance to kick things off. Let me just quickly start by saying that, you know, the role of the university is to get students excited about a career in retail, B to kind of highlight the career opportunities that they have and C is to probably provide them with the skill sets that is most needed to manage the retail landscape as it is right now.[00:06:58] To that extent, The job of academia is to address all three aspects, not just the last aspect of trying to create talent in a specific area and to bring them and give them skillsets. And generally, my perception to answer your question, Ricardo, is that where we have perhaps fumbled the ball slightly is that many of the students who work in retail really don't and in my class about 40% of them work in retail, don't understand what's the upward trajectory once they start working in retail, what the career paths that they have and what skills they have, and they don't have mentors to be blunt and honest, we are a minority-majority school, and I'm very proud of that fact. Many of them are first-generation students. And so they don't have people to guide them through that.[00:07:51] Like, Hey, look, retail is a good paying job. What they see is just a store associate. Many of them start off a store associates, but they don't see that thing forward. And they don't know what skills that they need to kind of get to that next level. So I'll talk about the skills needed in a later time, but I'll pause here too.[00:08:10] I'm sure Ron has, and others have things to add to this conversation.[00:08:14] Ron Thurston: I would love to, to jump in, thank you, Gautham.And I had the pleasure of being a panelist on on a session that Gautham led with students. And I could not agree more with, with his statement because, when you think about the industry and whether it's you're coming to an education platform like George Mason or you are[00:08:35] I'm coming into this from a, from a different angle or with no education at all. The opportunity that all of us have then in leadership roles is to provide that insight, to speak as loudly as possible to mentor, to find those chances, to, to share the unlimited opportunities there are available within the retail industry.[00:08:59] And by unlimited, it's from all the different brands that you could potentially work for, the opportunities both in store from a career trajectory and to multi-store heads of stores into other corporate roles, marketing, finance, social, design, buying, the, the jobs are unlimited, but often the best candidates that come are ones that come from the store that really understand the customer and understand that the product category demand have really have a deep understanding of what's needed in the industry and have such expertise when you come from the field. And I just think we don't speak about that enough or give the language to retail teams to be able to say, this is, you know, I'm a store manager of a, of a million dollar business, and here are all the things that I do even on a small team today to run this million multimillion dollar business and the list of competencies and how that moves you forward and, and how the industry works.[00:10:07] It's part of why we're in this situation today from a hiring perspective is because the industry doesn't see itself as one where careers are plentiful. And I know I personally love to change that in every way that we can.[00:10:21] Ricardo Belmar: Thanks, Ron. Thanks Gautham. I think these are some good points about this. So let me ask then the question, how do we introduce the right, you know, whether it's particular courses or particular skill sets and training for that at a university level, and what's the right approach for that? Gautham you hinted at having a few thoughts around this as well.[00:10:42] So maybe I'll turn this back to you for a moment and let you give us your thoughts on how you think that should be approached. [00:10:49] Gautham Vadakkepatt: Yeah. I'll just give you a case study of what I experienced at my university. Right? So I, I teach a introductory class to retail management. We have 22 students out of which about 40% of them actually work in retail.[00:11:01] When I started the course, none of them wanted to have a carer on retail. I'm not joking, not a single one of them wanted to work in retail. And what we did and I kind of went in anticipating this problem and what I did was to get various speakers. Ron was one of them. Jeff was another, we had several , speakers come and talk about their careers in retail, showcasing what they did, how you made progress up retail, what opportunities and skills that they have.[00:11:32] And as of last week, when I asked the same students, Hey, how many of you are going to work? You still think you don't want to work in retail. All six of them who said that, Hey, I did not want to work in retail said, I would like to pursue careers in retail. I just don't know how to get there. So at least we addressed the first problem that, okay, now we know that there is interest.[00:11:54] It's just about providing them with information and it's thanks to people, leaders in the space who come and present their viewpoint to classrooms and give them real world experiences of what retailers that addresses the talent, the first step of the talent going into retail. And then of course, providing them with the skills to succeed in retail today that that's partly on us academics to make sure that they have the skills.[00:12:23] Right. And so, while I take the first class on retail foundations, the second class I teach is emerging technologies in retail. So that once we get them interested in retail, then I tried to provide them the skills that they need to succeed in retail today, which is not just the people skills very critical, but it's also the technology aspect that they need to be able to do the science and the art behind these two things.[00:12:48] So that's the way, that's the approach that the center has taken to educate students at Mason on retailing. Give them an opportunity to succeed in the retail landscape today.A student's first exposure to retail[00:13:00] Ricardo Belmar: Let me ask you a question on that note. Two things I want to get at. Because I'm wanting to dig a little deeper into what you were saying about the component of teaching, more about emerging technologies as what I would consider a valuable enticement to someone in that program to understand more about the art of the possible and what maybe the future looks like versus what has gone in the past that they may need to learn.[00:13:22] But one of the comments I'm seeing in the back channel is that when we think about where does that first exposure coming from to retail for a lot of students, you know, by the time they get to you, for example, they may have had a summer job working as a frontline staff in a store, and that has formed their opinion coming in as to what working in retail is like.[00:13:44] So is part of the solution here, in one sense, What are the right programs and how do you describe it? What do you teach in that program at the university level, but then going back a few steps. And I think Ron, maybe you might have a few thoughts here. It's so critical then what that experience for that... let's assume it's a high school student, for example, who takes that first summer job at a retail store, that experience is going to define their perception of retail as an industry and as a business. So is that as important as what they might see looking forward into college programs that talk about retail, and how do you weigh the difference here? [00:14:21] Ron Thurston: Yeah. Ricardo, I'd love to jump in because you're, you're exactly right. And I speak about this often to say again, when you are placed in a, any kind of leadership role, assistant manager, store manager, multi-store leader, all, you know, all of us that have had those roles. It becomes your responsibility to pay that forward to wherever possible.[00:14:45] And I love this idea of you creating an environment where young people are learning what it means to function in the workforce and that they go home until their parents, you know, what their experience was at work, and you have the opportunity to create something that's really magical through a great onboarding, you know, an interview journey and onboarding an immersion in the brand.[00:15:10] You're learning how to sell. You're learning how a business operates back of house, front of house, visual merchandising in a cash management. You're learning all these skills and a well led store provides that opportunity for someone to say, wow, I really love doing this, which may turn into a a change of heart in a career trajectory, or may say, you know, I'd really like to learn more about this part of the industry and start to study, but I, you know, the, the data shows a variety of things, but on average, one in three, one in four first jobs in this country are in retail. And so we have the opportunity. We have the big base of people to do this well. And the kind of desperation that I think some brands find themselves in today means those people may not be getting a great first experience.[00:16:01] And that's, that's something we could certainly improve.[00:16:03] Ricardo Belmar: Jeff. I want to give you a chance here. Do you have some thoughts on this point? [00:16:07] Jeff Roster: Yeah. My first thought is I wish I could've worked for, for Ron![00:16:14] I started off with my dad. [00:16:16] Probably the toughest spot I've ever had in my entire life. And then was it another retailer and Ron, what's interesting how you said that, just how you phrased it. I mean, it was, you know, I just, the onboarding, the onboarding journey. I mean, what a, what a fantastic way to say that when I started at Mervyn's, I mean, it wasn't a journey. It was a very mechanical process and everything about that was a mechanical process. And I think the thing that was the roughest about that particular organization is the leaders, the senior leaders, didn't at least on the selection side didn't encourage their people to be successful away from under their direction .[00:16:54] So in other words, I don't wanna, I don't wanna I don't want my junior manager to be successful because then I'm gonna have to replace that person. And that is a cancer that hopefully we get away from. Both my kids work in tech, shockingly, they work in tech and their management. I won't say the organizations, although, you know, the organization be proud of it.[00:17:14] Their organization's leadership wants these kids to be successful. And they're rewarding their managers for making them successful, even if, even if it means moving out of their teams. And that is such a difference in, unfortunately I think how a chunk of folks in retail still operate. And that's, that's something that we, as a whole have to say, we, you can't do that.[00:17:33] You gotta, you gotta promote, you gotta encourage, you got to let these people grow and you know, it, it's just a different mindset. So, Ron, I just want to celebrate you. I want you to be amazingly successful and I want you to carry that message far and wide, because that we have to get to that point.[00:17:50] Gautham Vadakkepatt: If I could just echo what Jeff said. If, if there are more Ron's people who could actually create that amazing first experience, For people who get into college, that would be awesome because just frankly, in the past 10 years I've been teaching very few times have students actually come in saying that, Hey look, I've had a great experience.[00:18:16] And so most of the effort I put in, in that first course is always towards trying to reframe what their experiences are and how Ron said it. Right? Like you can frame being a store manager, working in the store in so many different ways and so many useful skills that you develop, but they don't get to see it that way.[00:18:38] And until we can actually change that, none of the rest of the point is difficult to address. You got to change that initial perception that people have.[00:18:49] Ron Thurston: Yeah. And I think thank you for those compliments. That's really nice. And I'll tell you a funny side story and then I'll make a comment that there was, I was, a general manager for Banana Republic in 1996 in the Houston Galleria. And I just know that because I had moved from LA to Houston for Gap, Inc., and I was running that store and there was a young woman who was 16 at the time and who I hired, who was an absolute rock star.[00:19:16] Her name was Sarah. And she went on to become the vice president of planning and allocation for Neiman Marcus because Texas based and through her journey we had stayed in contact. So today she's a mom of two kids and I was listening to a podcast and she was talking about me and learning those skills early in her career and kind of mentorship and inspiration.[00:19:43] And it isn't as if I been a mentor for her for the last 20 years. But the impact that we can make early in someone's career is it's, it's like parenting. It's like every decision that you make has an influence on someone, how someone engages in the workforce. And I don't ever take that lightly. And I, I encourage others to do the same, but this is a really good example of investing in store level leadership.[00:20:14] And we put so much emphasis in our industry on senior leadership and, how brands set the stage around culture and vision, but it is only done well and executed at the store level. And the whole thing can either be extraordinary and executed at the average store in average place. And Jeff I'm from California.[00:20:38] So I know Mervyn's really well. And that's where I also grew up. But the idea of how does that trickle down, but what does that investment from the ground up versus top down and how we can make a huge difference and just the future of the workforce. And we are in desperate times right now, we see exactly what is happening.[00:21:00] If we don't fix this, we are going to be in a very difficult situation. And for me, this is a fire that we have to fix right now. Priming students for a career in retail[00:21:09] Ricardo Belmar: It is a crisis mode from that perspective. And what I usually talk about is it's years of neglect and just paying lip service to wanting to make conditions better creating career paths that, that are more meaningful.[00:21:21] And it now it's all coming to the surface and, becoming a much more visible problem as workers have realized they have, other options that they can pursue. [00:21:29] I would argue it starts with the industry itself. Right. And I think Ron, this is some of the things that you were pointing out as well, that it has to come from within. Do you have the ability to present what are those career paths that might entice someone.[00:21:42] Walk that path and pursue it as they go into a college setting. So I want to come back on that note then to something else Gautham that you said , back to the point you made about the emerging technologies class that you're doing, what, what are your thoughts on how broad of a retail focused program at a university need?[00:22:01] How much breadth does it need to cover? So things like, the basics of a retail business, for example, but then also, you know, you're, you're talking about emerging technologies, which I would view as one of those more enticing things that might get people who would not consider a career in the retail industry, but maybe is very interested in one of those emerging technologies as a way to learn how that applies in this industry.[00:22:22] But beyond that, even what are some of the other areas that you look to either introduce in your program or that you think, universities are best positioned to really enable that s [00:22:32] Gautham Vadakkepatt: That's a great question. So my own perspective, and look, there are lots of universities that have retail programs, right? So there's always, you got to get what I think we can be safe to say is that you got to get the fundamentals of retail, correct. Before you can build on to things, right. Which would be managing the stores, which would be managing the merchandise and so forth.[00:22:56] And then you got to get to prepare yourself for the future, which is where the emerging technologies. So from my perspective, you need to have a combination of both typically where I see some of the programming lack is that later aspect, being able to react to those waves of destruction that are coming through or create a destruction, right.[00:23:19] And being able to prime the students. To be ready and to be able to respond to those changes. What I always tell my students is a very simple thing. Look, retail is a sector, anything and everything that is cool and current, you can learn and apply in retail. Right? So I've always said this to my students and many of them are computer science students.[00:23:44] They always say, Hey, I don't want to work in retail. And then a year of working with me, then they are actually working in retail. Right. And so there is something for everyone. That's the really awesome part about retail and my job as an academic and most of our academic institutions jobs is to expose students to that options, the variety of options.[00:24:04] And today the cool thing is technology, right? And it's, it's just, it's the cool thing. And many of the, the talent deficit when it comes to that is how do you apply these technologies into re. And most of the students who have the skills and technology don't want to go into retail. So by trying to build these bridging classes, that applied technology into retail, the hope is to get them excited and to keep that pipeline going.[00:24:29] If that makes sense. So I hope I answered the question because it's not one or the other, right. It's talk to get the fundamentals. The merchandising aspect is critical. If you are a retailer, you have to get that right. But you also have to get it right. To understand what's that future of retail look like.[00:24:45] And that's where things like people are doing a really amazing, right. You need to know how do you apply NFT. How do you apply things like blockchain and how do you apply AI into retail? Those are things that you need to understand so that you can do better moving forward.[00:25:00] Ricardo Belmar: I think that's a critical aspect is to really cover that wide variety of things and to kind of create an awareness that says, you know, retail is not just about one thing. You can do all of these other things in this industry as a way to really you know, get those students excited about it and interested in wanting to pursue that career path.[00:25:18] So let's go on to another topic that I think is another significant area that universities can contribute in retail. And that's what I'm going to call community building, which is creating this environment where in addition to students and that young talent pool that you're developing, you're also connecting retailers with other parts of the ecosystem in really a neutral environment, right? It's, you know, you might be connecting other technology providers and vendors. You should be connecting startups even connecting VCs with those startups because you have this kind of neutral platform. I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts around, what would you expect universities to be doing in this area where you're creating that community within the retail ecosystem?[00:26:02] Gautham Vadakkepatt: I'll be the student and I'll listen to all the comments, because this is, [00:26:05] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. I'd like to hear you. Yeah. I'd like to hear your thoughts Gautham at the end. And in fact, I'm going to put Jeff on the spot and ask Jeff to start [00:26:12] Jeff Roster: let's see. What would I like to see? Given that retail is such a large employer and given universities are looking for connections, I would like to see universities that want to engage in retail to have to reach out to the retail industry, set up mentorship programs, set up online conversations set up a clubhouse room to bring in, you know, retail executives and invite students to come and engage.[00:26:35] You know, all of the above, reach out to the industry and say, who wants to, you know, who wants to help transform everything? I mean, you know, Ron, Ron set it up perfectly. W w you know, it's a, what's a five alarm fire going on right now. So let's start, let's start figuring out how to fix it.[00:26:49] Let's open up conversations. Let's, let's think about what university needs to do, you know, in 2023, not what it did in 1980 .[00:26:56] Ricardo Belmar: That's a great point. You got a long list of good suggestions there. Ron, I'll ask you, what, what are some of your thoughts on this point? [00:27:02] Ron Thurston: Yeah, I agree with it all the Jeff said that and, and I think what we can do is make it even less complicated. So when we think about how we, how the industry can insert itself into the, into the education system to make it a a lunch and learn, make it a quick conversation, make it a zoom call with your class.[00:27:26] I know the other night I was on the phone with Ricardo and Casey and then jumped onto a class at NYU of students who were studying law with a focus on retail. And interestingly enough, they had a lot of questions about how the industry actually works. How do retail executives engage with the legal community, how like good experiences I may have had how was the org how are organization set up? It's like they had almost no knowledge of the industry yet they were studying it and choosing a specialty of retail and you know, so fine. It's an hour for me. And that's an easy ask for any of us to just jump in and share our experience, share the brands, share a careers talk about the power of the industry.[00:28:16] And I personally like would like to be asked more. And then I have a large set of peers who would say the same. It's a pleasure because when we were growing up, whether it's Jeff at Mervyn's or, you know, myself at, at Broadway department store to start, and then many years at gap, I would have loved to have heard from other people about how to navigate this industry, that no one's going to teach you how to do, you either figure it out yourself, or you have people around you that you can ask great questions. And so I think ask more and and make it easy for us to do.[00:28:53] Ricardo Belmar: Want to introduce Mia Lupo, who just joined us on stage. I think Mia, you have some thoughts you wanted to share on this topic.Retail Curriculum Example [00:28:58] Mia Lupo: Yeah, sure. Thanks Ricardo. And thanks everyone for being here. I'm gonna share my experience coming from a small liberal arts university, I graduated from Salve Regina university. It's based in Newport, Rhode Island, beautiful school. That's what everyone seems to just test has to say about it, but we do have other things besides being beautiful school.[00:29:19] So one thing I think it depends. It's like the, it's the commitment of higher education to recognize retail is vital and relevant, which we, of course we know that, but you know, having the commitment, having retail integrated in the curriculum. So for example business is the business degrees.[00:29:41] They're a strong arm at Salve Regina's campus. And so one of the professors doctor app grab, she does have a semester course dedicated to retail. And not only does that include, kind of the ins and outs of how retail business works, but it also includes kind of hands-on interactions with alumni who are in retail, working retail currently.[00:30:05] And on top of that, it building upon a depends on the university's commitment to exploring retail, you know, the alumni network. I think that's a huge, under utilized, simple, easy way. For example, Ron was talking about, these meet and greets for like an hour to, talk about who they are, for alumni to talk about who they are, what they do.[00:30:26] And so. For example, for me, I was invited to virtually visit campus and discuss, my career journey and retail, which is, will be nine years, like next year. And a lot of students I believe are curious, but it's like being able to provide those opportunities. And I think, being able to utilize our networks accordingly to, help get the word out.[00:30:51] So that's my 2 cents on that.[00:30:53] Ricardo Belmar: Thanks for sharing that Mia. I appreciate it. So let me pause here at this moment, Gautham you've been listening to everybody's comments so far is anything standing out to you or do you have any strong thoughts either about what everyone has suggested?[00:31:05] Or maybe there are things that we didn't suggest yet? [00:31:09] Gautham Vadakkepatt: No, I love all the suggestions and it, you know, I love it, particularly both Ron and Mia had to say one Ron saying like, it's an hours commitment, right? That the simple, low lying fruit that can actually transform. I can say this personally, like I got about eight speakers in my class, and that was one small comment that one of the speakers made that literally brought one of the students to tears.[00:31:35] And they connected, and then they had some further conversation. So it's a very limited ask, but it can have the potential to transform literally students' life. And so all these simple opportunities, the one that we have said, right. To getting people and talking to the alumni base and so forth, we're trying to do all those things.[00:31:54] But any other thoughts to make students more excited about retail in general would be greatly appreciated. [00:32:02] Mia Lupo: I do have one other thing I can offer. Salve Regina, we do have a center dedicated to connecting small businesses. So for business majors, their final project for the year is to do like the business plan and they are connected with a number of small businesses or small to medium-sized businesses throughout Rhode Island.[00:32:27] And to come up with suggestions and ideas. And I think that something like that, like a hands-on opportunity, connecting with the community is a really interesting way to, you know, kind of give them that real life experience to really fully analyze what it really takes to, be in retail and, the, the opportunity of it now, again, that's, for, a small liberal arts university.[00:32:51] That's just, an example of a smaller scope, but, it's still all the more reason it could be something that's, very important to get students involved. I mean, plenty, plenty of colleges and universities use students, as you know, mini think tanks to, think of so many great ideas and to push their business forward.[00:33:11] So maybe that's something that, larger retailers could invite, could invite students to new, do more projects to submit things. It could be very interesting[00:33:21] Gautham Vadakkepatt: if I could just make one comment on that. I would love the larger retailers to do that, but I will say this on behalf of the small re, like our school does this with the small retailers and there's a lot of it and they give students a great opportunity to make their resume look different. And it also exposes them to the opportunities in retail.[00:33:41] So that'd be a really great opportunity to have. And if there are retailers in the room, please do reach out.[00:33:47] Ricardo Belmar: I do think that is a wonderful idea of, or any kind of project work like that, that you can connect with a retailer that just would provide so much valuable experience for the students to really understand the business and understand the impact of the problem they're trying to solve. But with that project, I think that's just a wonderful, wonderful way to go.Retail vs Commerce - a misperception?[00:34:06] Casey Golden: I think there's also something that I've found is the difference of perception between retail and commerce. The commerce seems to be cooler. And go figure. But what retail means to a lot of people is very different. And everybody seems to understand what commerce is whether or not it's omni-channel or bricks or clicks or, or whatever that is, whether or not it's it's travel or fashion or home goods.[00:34:33] It's kind of just not it's not as, as, as pigeonholed by perception, I'm finding. So I do find that that might be something that is interesting. I find it, I find your program to be so impactful the way that you've, you've designed. As somebody who, I mean, I've got my second bachelor's in apparel design and merchandise planning, and it was still very much designed around the fact and marketed that I was going to be a designer.[00:35:03] And granted, I thought I was going to be a designer till I learned production, but it was never brought up to go into the tech side to go into supply chain management, managing production was never a conversation about an ERP system. And I feel like a lot of the, the more that changes that you can be in tech and be in commerce or retail.[00:35:26] There's a lot of other jobs out there that do pay better than what they may have that preconceived notion of. So I think it's, I think it's all very interesting as we kind of build out these new curriculums and Gautham, I think you're just doing a really great job. [00:35:42] Gautham Vadakkepatt: Thank you. [00:35:43] Ricardo Belmar: That's a really fascinating point you made there Casey about how the perception is different if you frame it in terms of commerce versus retail. And I wonder if, if there's some of that have to do with I guess you were saying right, that the production side of things, or, you know, if you're looking at fascia and it's because you're looking at the design side of it, or is it because in recent years, we've, we've had so much more build up from a media perspective of direct to consumer brands and digitally native brands that somehow that appears different to students than what they might think of as a traditional retailer.[00:36:14] Gautham does that ever come up, but with your students, is there a variation in that perception.[00:36:19] Gautham Vadakkepatt: Absolutely. There is don't, please don't take this the wrong way, but there is a negative perception around retail and that's why I applaud Ron for what he does in changing that initial experience. And it's, it's part of that, right? When you take that frame out of their thinking and you juxta position a different framework, they seem to have a different mindset.[00:36:46] Very, very different mindset. And I'll say it, it is just a mindset issue because through the length of the program, what students have come to realize is that commerce and retail are the same thing, and retail and have for negative connotation. This was one of the students who actually said that they'd like, yeah, I didn't think about all these other things that you had.[00:37:11] The speakers have highlighted as far as being retail. I was like, yeah, but I thought that was all commerce. So that's part of just the mindset mentality that is driven by past lived experiences. And this is where, those first impactful moments are crucial to ensure that the supply of talent into retail continues to be of high quality and addresses the new skills that's needed.[00:37:37] Ricardo Belmar: Perception it's really, it's such an important point an issue to overcome, right? Because it all comes back to that perception of, is this, or is this not an interesting career path for me as a graduating student? And where is it going to lead? I want to kind of connect the dots with this on the, the question of community building, because, we're bringing up a lot of interesting facts around what makes it interesting to that student into that graduating student to stay in the, in the retail industry.[00:38:04] So when I look at community, I'm also thinking about how the university as that kind of neutral environment. And I like to think of it as a neutral environment, because in that sense, the university doesn't have an agenda other than to educate students at this point. So it is neutral from the perspective I believe of the retailer and technology providers.[00:38:24] If we look at this from a perspective of what if the university brought together some of those key technology providers that are doing these new emerging things for retailers and some of the startups that are coming around who are probably also looking for young talent, that they can bring into their startup organization with a fresh perspective and with an ability and understanding of what retailers need to have, because they've been through this program. What can universities do as they pull those together that not just makes it useful and enticing for the students, but then in turn makes it valuable for those organizations.[00:39:00] You know, what's going to make it valuable for the startups to be interested in coming to this neutral environment at the university to meet the students as well as any of the other technology providers. So I want to spend a few minutes on this point and Shish, I think you've got your audio issues sorted out, right?[00:39:15] Shish Shridhar: Yep. [00:39:15] Ricardo Belmar: Really curious to give you a chance to comment on this part. Building an ecosystem for startups[00:39:19] Shish Shridhar: Well, so one of the areas that Gotham and I have been working on figuring out is really trying to build that ecosystem where one, I think the point that he made that that universities are really that neutral place where retailers could go to one of the challenges I find, when working for tech vendor is there is potential perception of bias there and where, there's multiple tech vendors and, and each one will come in with the buyers for their technology. And universities are in a position to kind of work across all of these tech vendors and be able to pick the best of the, startups out there and make recommendations based on that.[00:40:08] So I kind of think from that perspective, there is a possibility for us to bring together identify what are the top innovations happening? What's the emerging technologies happening and a respective of what tech vendor they are affiliated to, to have that unbiased rating and capabilities being listed out.[00:40:31] So that's one aspect of it. And what you pointed out is, you know students and engaging students is an important element for, for startups. And that ecosystem could be beneficial for startups as well where they could engage, collaborate with startups, with the students. The other aspect of it that Gautham and I have been talking about is really building GMU to be the place where startups could be born.[00:41:00] One. Really reaching out to retailers to determine what are the big business challenges that retailers are trying to solve today that we don't have solutions for. And then building out potentially maybe a hackathon around that and bringing together students, bringing together startups to help address those challenges, providing the resources for that, and then building an ecosystem that will create startups, innovative startups that are trying to solve the top problems in retail.[00:41:37] And that's again, another aspect that Gautham and I have been talking about as well. [00:41:42] Casey Golden: Yeah, I think that's really great. I just spoke to Northwestern. And they have a, program of, they call them company cohorts and companies come in and it's almost like a job fair at the beginning of a term. And you literally, the students go in there and they sign up for a cohort with a company and they spend the next 16 weeks working for the company as their class.[00:42:12] I find it incredibly interesting. And the person I was speaking to mentioned that there's a huge interest in fashion and retail and retail tech and direct to consumer brands and people who want to open up their own or work in that field. But there was no brands or retailers or fashion companies that are part of the cohort.[00:42:34] And so, you know, JP Morgan's there, Bain is there, there's, there's all these other companies, but there wasn't any brands or retailers. So I think that that's a really good way as just reaching out even and putting ourselves with the universities to, to build it so that we can also, you know, start developing that talent early and these students get a chance to participate.[00:43:00] They even have a venture program, which I found really interesting. Ron and I both met this gal Gabby when we were in Dominican Republic , and they have a, a venture analyst team there and they work with the alumni for deal flow so that these people, these students are able to start understanding venture capital.[00:43:23] And they're just, they're just helping startups. To get experience,[00:43:30] you know, so I think more practical ways that, and it's, it's considered a cohort and it's a 16 week class. Just like if you were going in to taking a class for biology, but you're actually working for companies, [00:43:41] Ricardo Belmar: what a great experience. [00:43:43] Gautham Vadakkepatt: I was going to say, I love that idea. And you know, Casey to your point generally, what academics, what is common across all academia is that there is a gap, right?[00:43:54] Like once you get into a company takes my statistics, are it takes two years to kind of bring them on board or that's the statistics that I've been provided. So doing these kinds of cohorts stuff, actually sharpens that. Right. And so they get hit the ground running. I hadn't thought about that. So it'd be wonderful to get retail involved in something like that.[00:44:16] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think that would be a fantastic experience for everyone involved that would be producing really amazing outcomes too. I think that would be fascinating. [00:44:24] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, a lot of times these new grads, they they're not ready for the job. [00:44:28] Ricardo Belmar: And I think that's a great way to kind of give them that early exposure, right?[00:44:31] Casey Golden: Yeah. Really getting that early exposure. And you know, we have a history of wooing people into the fashion industry about trips to Paris and living in New York. And we never, there's no TV show that ever mentions that you're spending, you know, nine hours a day in an Excel file. [00:44:55] Ricardo Belmar: I think that part gets edited out of each episode.[00:44:59] Casey Golden: And then you don't realize how much math you. The amount of math that you do in retail would make any person's head spin that they didn't realize you could do math like that. And I think that that's, that's something that's definitely underlooked or overlooked. Right. You know, like it's heavy math.[00:45:19] Gautham Vadakkepatt: It's true. I will support that point even to this day when I, my classes is always numbers heavy. And they're like, this is retail. I'm like, yeah, it does retail. That's what you got to do fully agree with that last [00:45:36] Casey Golden: No, you get marketing and go into fashion is like pretty much what is that? That, that commentary? I wouldn't have ever really learned math if it wasn't for Polo University. I started out Ralph Lauren, I got handed a $30 million business and they put me into retail math classes every Friday.[00:45:57] So I think it, I think it's really important that students know really what's expected of these jobs and especially the senior positions on what it's going to take to get you there. And if, if you're prepared you don't have to be that coordinator for that long. [00:46:17] Ricardo Belmar: That's a great, great point.[00:46:18] And also speaks to an opportunity where the retailers that don't have that kind of Polo University, they should be working with universities to create those professional programs and make them available for both, you know, any existing executives or anyone who's wants to go down that path and get to those positions and have that available to them.[00:46:37] So they don't research it and feel like they have to do that in house, right. They have access to other education institutions that can help them with that. And then would love to see more of that happening. [00:46:47] I have one last topic to throw out for everyone. And I'm going to direct this one to Jeff first as who we all collectively always refer to as "the analyst."Universities drive neutral research [00:46:55] Ricardo Belmar: And this point is really about how university can contribute as a, again, focusing on the neutrality aspect of it, but as a neutral research platform that, and be able to research and contribute to the different projects in that way, in a way that, you know, you can't expect other vendors or technology provider sources to do, to do things that retailers are trying to solve. So, Jeff, what's your, what are some of your thoughts on that research perspective? [00:47:19] Jeff Roster: Well, I mean, you got it. You got it exactly right. The only neutral platform out there is universities and could maybe make the case. They, you know, a vendor might have some influence there, but no, no one else is neutral.[00:47:31] Literally. No one else's neutral and no one has as many scientists and engineers and want to be scientists and want to be engineers. So to me, It's just such a natural marriage. I just love, love what Casey said. What gosh, how could I, how could I get into that training program for venture? What if I could fake, like I'm a kid again?[00:47:51] It just, it's such a logical place to go. We're all trying to figure out the next iteration of, of the consumer. And guess who's sitting, sitting, you know, in a giant sea of these consumers, it's the university who is who, who is paid to research universities. You know, it's just such a perfect venue that I don't think we in retail have really even begun to scratch the surface of.[00:48:14] And that's why, I love what Gautham is doing now. He's stepping out and not just talking about supply chain or not just talking about merchandising, but, but really if you look at a lot of the work it's it's AI, which I'm obviously a huge fan of it's low code it's, it's blockchain, it's all of these emerging technologies that these kids are going to get exposed to.[00:48:33] And whether they stay in retail or not, they're going to be literally working with 21st century technologies. And I just, I just think this is a fantastic opportunity for, for literally everyone involved, including the executives that'll get involved, they'll gain five X more than they'll ever give. You cannot out-give generosity.[00:48:50] It always, it always comes back fivefold. [00:48:53] Casey Golden: Well, that's it. These are our customers, you know, like crazy. They are our customers. We want them about to get jobs.[00:49:02] They are our customers. I worked at Abercrombie and Fitch back when that was super cool to do. And I was always very impressed. At the time I was there in order to get a job at corporate or move into corporate, you had to be a store manager. Unless you were like probably some very senior executive that got transferred in.[00:49:24] Otherwise you had to be a store manager for at least one year before you could take a job at corporate. And I fought, I felt that that was such a great way to bring everybody in with. Real experience managing the stores. And they too did all of their recruiting. At high schools and colleges, they had a huge footprint on campus.[00:49:48] I mean, I went to games like I was at football games. I was at basketball games with like five to 10 people on my staff, recruiting employees to come work at the store, but there was such a presence on campus and the brand was on, was there and coming to games and starting to make that impact. And, you know, at that every single what, two days a week, we had a minimum of 50 people wanting to interview twice a week.[00:50:19] And there was huge amounts of people that wanted to work at the company because. You know, one of the reasons is we showed up.[00:50:26] So I think that, you know, there's a lot of opportunity there to get involved with, with more campuses and, and get the brand presence involved with the culture so that people are aware and, and they've known for a long time and, and they got to work for the company. They got to intern for the company.[00:50:44] And that's the beginning of brand equity. I feel in a lot of places. [00:50:48] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that becomes a much more collaborative environment and in much more inclusive that way. And I think you're absolutely right in calling it a brand equity, because it really just creates an affinity for not just that brand, but even for the industry as a whole.[00:51:02] Gautham, I know you have a specific point of view on contributions that universities can make on the research perspective. So I wanted to hear your thoughts [00:51:10] Gautham Vadakkepatt: Yeah, my job is correlated with my research productivity, right? Teaching is a required aspect, but I get evaluated mostly on my research.[00:51:20] And so there is a large opportunity for universities to get involved in research that addresses industry specific problems. Right? All universities are trying to do these things, right. So it is, it is a shared responsibility. It's a shared dance. It can't be that one person comes to the table. It has to be everyone.[00:51:41] And by that, I mean, the retailers, as well as the vendors all have to come together to do research that actually helps advance industry, but really are, we get paid to do research, right? Why not leverage us and our students, actually, many of us students crave to do research as well. And so this is a good training ground to get the future prepared for what it is, it hones their thinking ability, it hones their ability to do research.[00:52:12] It also gives them a deeper dive into specific industries. So for me, I get most excited about the opportunity to do research and the, the possibility of the center and full disclosure, every center, and most institutions try to do. Right. The opportunity to partner with retailers or retail associations to address industry specific problems excites me.[00:52:38] The challenge is trying to figure out how to do the dance, right? How do we how do we do the research that helps both the university as well as a retailer, while still maintaining the critical aspect that Jeff said neutrality to be the neutral ground. We don't have an option. We cannot pick sides. And so we have to be neutral and that requires more detail, more thoughtful and careful research.[00:53:04] Ricardo Belmar: I hear what you're saying. I think you're absolutely right. And it's one of these things that's so overlooked, I think by the industry when there's so much opportunity here, because as you pointed out, one of your primary roles is to do research. And as, as every university is doing, and the students have a very big role to play in, in many cases, in that research. So it's just something that the industry and I think Jeff said this as well, just doesn't take enough advantage of and, and leveraging to really understand how they could solve so many different problems by just looking at this research. And, and again, from that neutral point of view, because the university is not doing this from a perspective that some vendors are going to be perceived as yes, we'll help you figure out that problem because we hope to sell you something at the end.[00:53:48] And sometimes that's true. Sometimes that's not. But from the university's perspective, that's not even in anyone's head, right. It's not a goal that anyone has is just do the research to see what the outcome is. And then what can we learn from that? And how can that be applied? And that's something that would be a benefit to any retailer.[00:54:04] When you look at it, what can be done in that kind of outcome? [00:54:07] Gautham Vadakkepatt: Yeah. And if I may add, right, there's also the opportunity that each retailer or solution provider, whatever we'll house specific problems that are particular to them, right. And they might not have the bandwidth or the resources to dedicate time and effort to do it.[00:54:23] These might not be high priority, obviously should not be high priority problems. But these could be problems that are important to their operations. And this could be another chance to partner with universities and faculty and students to kind of get those problems addressed, get some insights from there and, you know, move from there.[00:54:41] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's another excellent point on the research component to this. And just for me, more, more reasons why that should be leveraged more often and in so many more ways that are just a missed opportunity and the way it's looked at today. Closing thoughts[00:54:56] Ricardo Belmar: I think we could probably talk for even another hour on this topic. I think, you know, Gautham, I think I probably won the bet on that one about how much interest there would be in how long this conversation would go. But we, we were kind of curious what to everyone would want to contribute to this discussion, but I think we've actually touched on a lot of different areas.[00:55:12] I want to give Gautham, Ron, both of you as our special guests this week. Any, any last thoughts you have before we close?[00:55:19] Ron Thurston: Thanks. Thank you, Ricardo. It's so interesting because we all, we all can be involved in this. And I think that the conversation from the brand side to find new ways to develop and hire and train and bring people into this industry is at a point where new ideas have to come forward and, and capitalizing on some of this university partnership.[00:55:45] Could 2022 could be the year where this actually gets much better. And that's what I'm hearing tonight is, we, some of us have had great experiences when it was really good and in some earlier years and we have to get back to that place. That's how people came into this industry. Many of us did, we have to get back there and now is the time to do that well, and it's, it's actually really exciting, as hard as it is right now.[00:56:12] I find the opportunity to be really thrilling what the future is going to look like. So thank you for having me tonight. [00:56:18] Ricardo Belmar: Thank you, Ron. I think you're spot on the fact that this is a subject area where everyone has an ability to help move things forward and contribute for the better of the industry.[00:56:29] And I think it just requires that everyone participate at the end of the day and in whatever ways those are you know, and I think universities and academics have a really great ability to help lead us on this path. Gautham, any final thoughts. [00:56:42] Gautham Vadakkepatt: Yeah. I think you hit the nail on the head Ricardo and Ron.[00:56:44] First, Ron, thank you for all the mentorship. Right? We need mentors. We need people who will step up and thanks to everyone who does that. And we need more of that. We can change the dialogue if more people step up and thank you for everyone who's doing it. The second aspect is that, the George Mason university is just one of the centers that's trying to change retail, right? There are lots of schools just connect with academia in general, and to try and make those moments, those contact points with the students to help and our faculty to help change the conversation. And it could be an hour long.[00:57:23] Most schools, at least Mason has a program where you tell me how many hours you want to engage with our institution and we'll get you into the right type of program for that. And it could be from a research perspective, it would be from a teaching perspective, it could be from a mentorship perspective.[00:57:42] So this is a call for anyone and everyone to kind of come support the centers, as well as all academic institutions. We're trying to change the conversation.[00:57:52] Ricardo Belmar: thanks Gautham. I appreciate you and Ron joining us today. I think this was probably one of my favorite topics that we've done in the room and in recent memory. Kind of feel like we came to the end here with, with very significantly more positive vibe maybe then we came into it because we had so many constructive and useful suggestions that everyone offered.[00:58:10] I'm really pleasantly surprised that we had such wonderful contributions to a topic that doesn't really get enough attention for the betterment of the retail industry. So again, I want to thank everybody for having joined us today in the Retail Razor room and everybody have a great weekend. Gautham Vadakkepatt Interview[00:58:24] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome back everybody. We are fortunate to have one of our special guests with us, Gautham Vadakkepatt, director of the Center for Retail Transformation at George Mason University. [00:58:33] Casey Golden: Welcome to the show. Gautham, glad to have you with us today. [00:58:36] Gautham Vadakkepatt: Thank you for having me. [00:58:38] Ricardo Belmar: So Gotham one area, we didn't get a chance to dig into very much in the clubhouse session is a bit related to what Shish brought up in relation to startups.[00:58:47] And that's building an ecosystem of technology innovation and thought leadership around retail operations, and retail tech topics that all have different things retailers are challenged with today. And in fact, you have some pretty interesting plans for the center to address those needs starting this year, don't you?. [00:59:05] Gautham Vadakkepatt: Yeah, we do. So let me just begin by setting the stage by talking about the idea that academic centers are really neutral convening points, right? Our job is to advance the discipline and to help build new knowledge and disseminate new knowledge. And if you think about retail, the fundamentals of retail are critical for retailers to succeed, but how they get those fundamentals, how they arrive at the right mix of the fundamentals is largely predicated on technology, data and so forth. And so what we're trying to do here at the center is trying to help showcase how those elements are able to help retailers succeed and to share that knowledge with a larger audience, but providing that neutral platform. So you asked me, how are we going to do this? So first and foremost is that we're going to build a sequence of thought leadership events.[01:00:03] So I'm happy to say that in 2022, we'll be having a five-part transforming retail webcast series, where we talk about different aspects of retail that help retailers succeed. Particularly for the first session, we're going to talk about frictionless checkout customer data with regards to how companies can utilize it to do better.[01:00:26] And enhance the customer experience in-store experiences that retailers can kind of engage in talking about sustainable retail returns. And then finally, everyone has to talk about this these days, talk about Metaverse and how retailers can incorporate web 3.0 largely speaking into their portfolio of tools to help enable a better customer experience. So that's largely one step that we got going with regards to thought leadership and sharing knowledge that has been generated by a lot of startups. The intent of these webcast series is to bring startups in conjunction with retailers to showcase the critical problems and to provide a unifying framework, to think about these problems.[01:01:14] The second aspect that we have intended is to kind of help to research, right? So a lot of startups want research to showcase the value of their products to showcase how they are different and where else to go. But to, in my opinion, obviously there's a bias here, but where else to go but an academic center where we are bound to be neutral, to kind of help build some of the research that supports these various entities.[01:01:43] We have students who are eager to do research. And so this is a pairing in some ways made in heaven, like no pun intended. And we have faculty who want to engage with a lot of the startups to understand what's at the cutting edge. So we launched this brown bag series where we bring, start ups to talk to our faculty.[01:02:07] It's a close room. Everything that happens in that room stays in that room. We discuss the problem and they walk away with ideas. It's just a one hour session, but we've been doing this for a while now, and it's been very successful. To the extent that it's allowed startups to generate ideas, understand what's been done in research before, walk away with some ideas to leverage to their own context and allows faculty to know what's going on in the retail startup space.[01:02:37] And the last point, Ricardo that we're trying to do with regards to efforts to support the retail ecosystem. It's projects for students and trying to get startups to work with these students who eventually will work with some of these startups to get them in early, get them excited about these startups and to help them solve the problems that the startups have, go to market strategy building databases or doing analytics for the startups and are being creative problem solvers for problems that startups have. So broadly speaking, that's the three different domains in which we have efforts going in 2022 thought leadership, research, and getting students to work with these companies.[01:03:23] Casey Golden: That's great. There's no shortage of challenges to solve in retail. [01:03:28] Gautham Vadakkepatt: I hope so we've been getting some good traction there with people saying, Hey, you know, help me with the go-to-market strategy or help me figure it out really what's our value proposition and the students love it. The faculty love it because now we don't have to preach.[01:03:43] In some ways we get students to work on real projects and it helps build a CV and it helps us to showcase the relevance of what we're educating them on with real world examples.[01:03:56] Ricardo Belmar: Sounds like such a great set of activities. [01:03:58] I remember a little bit about that in the clubhouse session too. And with different ways you get students to engage. I'm sure that goes a long way too, towards getting the students to understand why they might want to go into the retail industry. Because they're seeing it from that technology angle that I think so often we don't see , other places just don't put an emphasis on that.[01:04:16] I think that's just a great uniqueness to what you're doing to really bring a different perspective for the students. So they get a much broader view of what's happening in the industry.[01:04:24] Casey Golden: Yeah. It is its own animal. You know, you can go to school for marketing or communications or, or business, but retail is really it's own segment. And it's not really something that you go and get a degree in. So I think it's great being able to open that up and, and expose what types of opportunities are available because it's very diverse.[01:04:48] There's so many different pieces that they can build a career from that they didn't even know that it existed as a job. So Gautham given all of these amazing activities and resources that you've planned at the center, can you tell us more about the objectives and mission and how you see it differentiating from other universities.[01:05:06] Gautham Vadakkepatt: So, there are a lot of centers that focus on retail and the objective is to have all the centers have the same unifying objective, which is to support retail and to provide talent to that retail ecosystem. And everyone has, their own unique take to it where our take is that retail is transforming .[01:05:27] The way things are being executed in retail is changing. And it's mostly driven by innovation and understanding the changing needs of customers. And to do that, the center believes that there are four pillars. And that's customer analytics and data insights. It's technology, it's rethinking the supply chain.[01:05:51] And we came over these four pillars prior to COVID. So let me just be clear on that. It's to rethink the supply chain so that we are more efficient and allows the supply chain to deliver growth, which is a primary objective of the supply chain. And the last aspect is to get the talent equipped with what the retailers need.[01:06:11] And so those are our four pillars. And so we try as a center, to be the center that is the foremost academic institution that leads the transformation in retail. And we build off of these pillars of innovation and changing customer needs, which require the retailers to do the fundamentals of retail very well.[01:06:31] But those fundamentals are delivered on the wings of technology and the wings of data on the wings of reimagining certain fundamentals of retail, like supply chain and the sustainability aspect. And of course the talent, right. We are living in a world where retailers are finding it super hard to find talent.[01:06:50] And we're trying to showcase that. So that's broadly speaking the objectives of the center and our focus largely is on where we you'd ask Casey, how we differ from other centers. So we stated this publicly many, a time.[01:07:07] We are focused on startups in a small and medium retail, which is probably 90% of all retail. The transformation that's facing retail applies to all retailers. The big companies can manage those transitions well, lot of the unique aspects are being generated by the startups. And so what we're trying to do is to try and help the startups, showcase what they're doing and bring it to light to the smallest retailers, and we're not talking just about the mom and pop stores. You're talking about tier two, tier three. I'm trying to expose them to all the innovation that's happening in retail and retail tech is one of the fastest growing sectors, startups, tech sectors right now. And there's a whole other,[01:07:58] I shouldn't be preaching to the choir here.[01:08:02] Oh, to keep abreast of the number of startups in the space and the unique aspects that we're doing. And we're just trying to use that platform that an academic institution has to showcase like, Hey, these are the amazing things the guys are doing and letting the retailers pick what solution matters to them.[01:08:22] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's such a great emphasis that you have in that area is I, have not seen that before in other centers or other associations. There's a lot of attention given to all the large retailers, who, of course they have the resources typically to investigate these different technologies to support startups themselves directly, but it leaves a big gap.[01:08:41] You know, from tier two, tier three, all the way down to the small mom and pop shops or so many retailers that are maybe five stores, right. That's not 500 and they're kind of left out. And I think so often in other industries anyway, that when you see new technologies come out, that technology tends to be an equalizer.[01:08:59] It tends to equalize the capability for the smaller operators versus the larger ones, but in retail, I think it's been a little bit more challenging because the technology gets I don't want to say complicated because a lot of technologies, the better ones try to simplify things, but just being able to deploy is a skill in and of itself. And being able to scale a deployment across a retail chain is another skill that you have to have, and not every retailer is as skilled at that as they could be and they need help. And I think the kind of resources and activities that you're leading with the center are really going to go a long way to help that segment of retail [01:09:33] Gautham Vadakkepatt: and Ricardo, it's not just about deployment, right?[01:09:36] Like for, in many cases with many retailers, it's even discovery, that's rough, the solutions, [01:09:42] right?[01:09:42] It stops. If you think about the one. [01:09:44] It starts with that discovery. And we have a problem with regards to discovering what there are solutions. There is a right solution for the retailer. Discovering those solutions is the first step before you can move them down.[01:10:00] And I also want to say one thing is that not all academic centers have the same goal, which is to support the retail ecosystem. And we are all partners in that crime of trying to get students to get into retail and actually be excited about what retail has to offer. And to that, they're all, we all support each other efforts and we learn from each other as best practices and so forth.[01:10:26] Ricardo Belmar: That, of course that makes complete sense. And again, going back to, I think the first topic we had in the clubhouse session, which was how do you get students excited about the industry, where, especially when there's so much happening in retail and particularly in retail tech, which is what we're all focused on in this show.[01:10:43] So yeah, it just makes all the sense in the world to be doing. So Gautham, this has been great having you join us here on the podcast and our, we could keep talking about these subjects for hours as I think you and I often do outside of this forum. So we will absolutely have to ask you to come back and visit us.[01:10:59] Gautham Vadakkepatt: I would love that opportunity. Thank you for having me. And yes, I could talk forever on this issue. When I, when I started on this journey, you know, I hadn't learned the depth and breadth of retail that I have now become a big evangelist of the role of retail startups and what they bring to the whole startup ecosystem in itself.[01:11:21] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. [01:11:21] Absolutely. [01:11:22] Casey Golden: Thank you for all your support on my end as well. [01:11:24] Ricardo Belmar: So before we wrap up Gautham, can you tell our listeners how they can reach out to you if they're interested in getting involved with the center's programs or how they can follow you and the centers activities? [01:11:35] Gautham Vadakkepatt: Yes. So you can find me on LinkedIn. Gautham Vadakkepatt importantly for the center we'll be launching our new website and it's fairly easy to follow GMU retail.org will be the website. We also have a LinkedIn page. If you type in GMU center for retail transformation you should be able to find us there.[01:11:58] Give us a follow if you are. Thank you for giving me this last second opportunity, but if any of you. Be at a startup be a small retailer or the bigger retailers or solution providers. If you want engage with the center, please feel free to reach out. We have a lot of opportunities to connect. We see our role as being a connector and trying to help build bridges.[01:12:19] And so if anyone wants to be in involved with the center, feel free to reach out. Clubhouse Thank You[01:12:27] Casey Golden: We'd like to take a moment to just thank everyone who joined us on stage for this clubhouse sash and ask Ron and Gautham questions and a special shout out [01:12:38] Ricardo Belmar: to Mia Lupo, no stranger to the retail razor room on clubhouse. Thank you Mia for sharing your nine years of retail experience with us and with our guest speakers.[01:12:46] Casey Golden: Thank you Mia. So Ricardo, that's a wrap . [01:12:49] Ricardo Belmar: Yes, indeed. It is. Thank you everyone for listening. Show Close[01:12:54] Casey Golden: If you enjoyed the show, please consider giving us a five-star rating and review on apple podcast. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. So you don't miss a minute. Want to know more about what we talked about? Take a look at our show notes for handy links and more deets.[01:13:11] I'm your cohost Casey Golden. [01:13:12] Ricardo Belmar: If you'd like to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at Casey C golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter at RetailRazor, on LinkedIn, and on our YouTube channel for video versions of each episode and bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.[01:13:29] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.[01:13:34] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter. Until next time, this is the retail razor show!

S1E4 – Top 10 Trends & Predictions for 2022Welcome to Season 1, Episode 4, the fourth ever episode of The Retail Razor Show!I’m your host, Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and lead partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.And I’m your co-host, Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock and slayer of retail frankenstacks!Together, we’re your guides on the retail transformation journey. Whether you're thinking digital and online, mobile, or brick & mortar stores, we’ll help you cut through the clutter!For episode 4 we’ve changed it up a bit and jumped over to the Callin platform to record this special episode where we give you our Top 10 Trends and Predictions for 2022!Hear what we’re thinking matters most for 2022 and what we expect it means for retail and retail tech. If you have any comments on what we’ve said, be sure and hit us up on Twitter or LinkedIn! And be sure and follow us on Callin so you don’t miss future episodes where we’ll be interviewing the people who are transforming retail and retailtech!The Retail Razor ShowFollow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazorConnect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazorJoin our club on Clubhouse: http://bit.ly/RRazorClubListen to us on Callin: https://bit.ly/RRCallinSubscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTubeSubscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShowRetail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPodHost → Ricardo Belmar,Follow on Twitter - ****https://bit.ly/twRBelmarConnect on LinkedIn - ****https://bit.ly/LIRBelmarRead my comments on RetailWire - ****https://bit.ly/RWRBelmarCo-host → Casey Golden,Follow on Twitter - ****https://bit.ly/twCaseyConnect on LinkedIn - ****https://bit.ly/LICaseyRead my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCaseyTRANSCRIPTS1E4 Top 10 Trends & Predictions for 2022[00:00:20] Introduction[00:00:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hello everyone. And welcome to retail razor show our first recording here on the Callin platform. So this is exciting, isn't it? Casey. [00:00:27] Casey Golden: It is. [00:00:28] Ricardo Belmar: I'm looking forward to our future episodes here. We're going to do some really cool interviews with people who are really doing things to transform retail and commerce.[00:00:37] Casey Golden: Anything that makes it easier to have these conversations, I'm in. [00:00:41] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. Exactly. So today we've got some fun stuff we're doing. We're going to talk about our top 10 trends and predictions for 2022. Because it's the beginning of the year. So of course we have to do that. Right. [00:00:52] Casey Golden: We do. And we have what, nine months to implement ?[00:00:55] Ricardo Belmar: That's right.[00:00:56] So we're hopefully improving our odds of success so that when we can do this next time, everyone can come back and say, Hey, they got that one right.[00:01:03] Casey Golden: Exactly. I will be keeping score!. [00:01:07] Ricardo Belmar: Well, we'll see how we each do here. I think we've each got five to share. So we'll see how we do this time next year.[00:01:13] #1 - Retail Media Networks & Customer Data[00:01:13] Ricardo Belmar: All right. So let's jump into top 10 trends and predictions. I'll kick off. And my first one has [00:01:20] to do with retail media networks which I know people who might be listening to, they're going to say, oh, that's not much of a prediction, but the slight twist I'm putting on this is a, they're kind of two schools of thought on this.[00:01:32] A number of people in the industry are saying that they're starting to see too many of these retail media networks and that they're all competing for the same ad capacity with brands. And how is any individual retailer really going to make a dent when Amazon's commanding over a third of all of this retail media network ad spend.[00:01:51] And my take on that is it, I feel like that's the wrong perspective to take because these networks aren't necessarily competing with each other. What they're really competing against are other forms of media, whether it's print, TV, streaming, video networks, all those kinds of things, or just plain old display ads on Google.[00:02:11] You know, these retail media networks are designed so that knowing that I'm already on the retailers platform and that's, we're assuming that retailer has a [00:02:20] marketplace on their e-commerce. So really what are they trying to do? I think they're trying to do two things here. Yes. There is an added revenue stream they're trying to generate by getting brands to spend money with them and to, buy product placements. And obviously Amazon is the most successful, but there are plenty of others, Kroger's doing well with this, Home Depot is doing well with this. And I think there's lots of room for other retailers to do the same even Target does well although their marketplace is kind of by invitation so it's a closed one. It's not quite the same, but I think there's plenty of room for, for retailers to succeed here. Because again, it's not, you're not really measuring yourself against how much ad market share am I taking from Amazon? It's just how much ad space am I selling on my marketplace site?[00:02:59] That's really the metric that matters. So I think any retailer with a marketplace can make this work and that's why we're going to see so many, even Best Buy announced. I think within the last week that they're doing this, and there's also room to expand just beyond your own marketplace, I think Best Buy's announcement also said that not only can you buy ad placement on the marketplace site [00:03:20] bundled into this would also be promotional ads in the store. So if you're a brick and mortar and online marketplace retailer, you've got both of those available and best buy is also saying we'll do third-party placement on third party networks, as well as part of the bundle.[00:03:33] So they'll get some revenue out of that, even if the brand is saying, yeah, give me some ads on the Best Buy site, but then I also want it on, Google search. And it seems like Best Buy is saying, we'll manage that for you as part of the program. So I think lots of room there, the second really important thing for this, which is the one I, I believe everybody overlooks.[00:03:51] This is another great way for a retailer to generate customer data because as customers interact with the digital ads for this, That's new customer data that's feeding into, hopefully the retailer has a customer data platform. They add this in with all the other first party data they have. And guess what?[00:04:07] They're going to learn a lot more about how their customers are shopping. And I would argue that's even more important than the incremental revenue they're going to get from the retail media networks. So that's my prediction that we're just going to see every retailer that [00:04:20] does a marketplace on their site.[00:04:21] They're going to introduce a retail media network this year. [00:04:23] Casey Golden: I think we've, we've definitely learned over the last two years with the increase of the cost of advertising that a lot of brands and companies need to diversify those channels and, and spread that out because it's been quite concentrated and the prices were driven up extensively while everybody moved their media buys into digital.[00:04:44] Ricardo Belmar: That's true. That's true. [00:04:45] #2 - Brick & Mortar Expansion[00:04:45] Casey Golden: I'm coming in at number two with brick and mortar expansion. Physical retail is not dead. I it's going to change. Amazon's new department store is re-imagining the shopping and buying experience. Really reaching customers in a, in a non-traditional way for them. And we're going to see a lot more pop-ups versus anchor stores changing these physical spaces from stacks of shirts to entertainment and showrooms.[00:05:08] I think we can all agree that Glossier has been the big winner here and pop-ups, and with that model, I think we're going to be seeing a lot more short-term and flexible leases so that more brands can go [00:05:20] into a space, spend three months and have the opportunity to create an extension. Really starting to understand who your customers are, where they live, where your biggest market opportunity is and create moments where brands and consumers can go through that product discovery and experience the brand, circulates a lot more neighborhood freshness. And when brands are trying to increase that LTV you know, we're fighting very low conversion rates online. Having a pop-up store can really increase that LTV over the long run, because it can create that brand affinity that e-commerce just, hasn't been able to capture the same way that brick and mortar has with getting into routine and, and making that meaningful connection to a consumer [00:06:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I like this prediction a lot. I really agree with you on all those points. The big thing that a lot of people miss here with this, even when we're talking about natively digital brands that are just starting to open stores too, I think that's included [00:06:20] in what you're saying here at the end of the day, in some ways, right?[00:06:23] This is just one big experiment for the brand. And, and I think that's a good thing because we don't historically think of opening stores as an experiment. I think maybe Amazon changed everyone's viewpoint on that for the better. And I think that is how everyone should look at it because you can learn a lot from that pop-up experience, just like you described, and then feed that back into even other sales channels.[00:06:42] You have to make you adapt to your customers. And that's really the whole point, isn't it? [00:06:46] Casey Golden: It is. You know, we've got to get in front of customers in general, and sometimes that's just showing up in their neighborhood and saying, we're here to serve you. Come experience our brand. [00:06:57] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And I'd say, if we really want to go out on a limb, we can kind of call this one, the the end of the retail apocalypse storyline.[00:07:03] Right. Because we're going to see more store openings as a result. [00:07:06] Casey Golden: I have seen a lot of announcements for new stores. [00:07:09] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. [00:07:10] #3 - Social Commerce & Livestreaming [00:07:10] Ricardo Belmar: All right, let's go to number three. So number three, this may not come as a surprise to a lot of people because I know I, I think we've all talked about this frequently.[00:07:18] We've got some [00:07:20] other podcast episodes coming on it and that's social commerce and live streaming going big. This year across the U S and in north America, it may not get as big as we see it in China and Asia, but that's okay. It's got room to grow. I think this is going to be something we see from both small and large retail.[00:07:35] I think the big twist I'm going to put on this is when we think about particularly the livestreaming piece. And in fact, I'm going to say the live streaming component to this is more important than social commerce as a whole, even though we tend to lump those things together, a lot of people assume that when we say social commerce, we're talking about selling through Instagram and Facebook and all the different social media platforms.[00:07:57] And I think small retailers will keep doing that. I think that's where the growth for them is. But the challenge with that, and we've said this before in our, at our clubhouse sessions is you don't own the platform then, right? You're borrowing the social media platforms access to customers. So you're not owning the relationship there in your sales process.[00:08:15] I think live streaming is going to help retailers change that perspective a couple of different [00:08:20] ways. One is using their frontline store associates as the live streamers versus paid influencers. So rather than going out and spending a lot of money, hiring an Instagram influencers, we're going to see retailers start leveraging frontline staff, who, by the way, if you look at the demographics of who you have, a lot of your I'll assume younger, but not necessarily right.[00:08:39] A lot of your staff, they already know how to do this, they've got their own YouTube channel for other reasons outside of the job. Retailers are going to get smart and say, Hey, we can just use the folks we have. It actually turns into a career incentive to want to work in retail, above and beyond the challenges every retailer is facing in the current labor shortage and trying to figure out how they can pay workers enough. This becomes a new, I don't want to say career perk, but it's certainly a new skillset and something that makes the employee more competitive and retailers are going to want them.[00:09:08] So picture your store associate doing live streams in a one to many format, right from the store, or maybe even from a studio-like space that the store has now carved out of their back room [00:09:20] a front of the store in some way to do this kind of production on a regular basis and hosted from their website.[00:09:25] So they don't have to be dependent on the social media platforms to do this. They're going to build a following that way. Both the retail brand and the individual associates are going to build the following for the associate. It's a great skill. I think it's something they'll enjoy doing. Not every associate is going to do it.[00:09:41] And that's okay. I think this speaks to the our podcast, a couple episodes back with, with Ron Thurston. When we talked about segmentation of skillsets and, and frontline workers, some staff will be better at doing some of the backroom functions. Some are going to be better at fulfilling buy online pickup in store orders, and some are going to be your live streamers.[00:10:00] And I think the analogy for me here is the same way we look at the fitness instructors in the Peloton app. That's what we're going to see happen with frontline staff and retail stores because of live streaming and really go out on a limb and say, if mall operators out there are listening, I would be telling you, you should be thinking about how you can turn this kind of concept into a [00:10:20]service you offer your tenants in the mall, especially the smaller retailers you might land, or even better as an enticement to those digitally native brands that you're trying to get to either set up a pop-up or set up a short-term lease in the mall. This is another incentive you could create by providing the live streamer.[00:10:36] So think of it in terms of what happened in the gaming world on Twitch and YouTube with live streamers. We're going to start to see this happen in the retail world. And I think this is going to really change how we perceive those frontline store associates. You could even see tie-ins to loyalty programs may be a perk.[00:10:52] When you reached the loyalty tiers, you get to participate in one of the live streams with, at your local store, with one of the live streamers that you shop from. And all of that I've just described as kind of in that one to many format. There's also the concept of doing this one-on-one with a customer from a store.[00:11:06] I actually believe smaller retailers. They're going to be the ones to drive this forward first, and then we're going to see the larger retailers start picking it up. [00:11:13] Casey Golden: I agree. You know, one of my favorite examples of this is Cameron from Walmart. He, [00:11:20] launched a tech talk in Walmart and he changed a lot of people's perspective of Walmart and just, he made it fun.[00:11:27] I, this done like one of the best jobs Taking that on and Walmart embraced him and promoted him. In turn, there was a gentleman Tony that worked at Home Depot who was mixing paints on Tik Tok and he was fired. And so I think changing some thought leadership inside these organizations and sanely, there is a possibility that one of your associates could potentially go viral, create this position before you're ready for it.[00:11:56] But how do you feel about it? And are you going to embrace it and start moving it into an initiative? Or are you going to, you know, shut it down? So I think it's we've had enough experiments in the space That more grand should really be looking at if this happened. [00:12:11] Ricardo Belmar: Right. And I really think to your point, right, brands should be looking at this as a way of improving the work environment for [00:12:20] those associates that are doing this, because they're going to find that they'll start hiring associates, that this is the big part of the job they liked.[00:12:26] So as you do this, it's going to help you solve that labor shortage problem you're experiencing right now. And you can't hire enough people. This is an enticement, and it starts to turn that retail job into something about more than just what's the hourly salary, ? Because this is now something that an associate can turn into a meaningful career path too, especially if you're thinking about hiring younger associates or even college students, for example, that are probably every college student can talk to you right now. If we brought them on the show, we'll say, oh, I would love to do live streaming. And now what, if you tell them what you can get paid by a store to do it on the store floor to help them sell products. Like you probably already know a lot about them.[00:13:00] So what could be better. [00:13:02] Casey Golden: I agree. [00:13:03] #4 - Personal Shopping[00:13:03] Casey Golden: I'm coming in at number four, we've got personal shopping. I'm obviously biased if anybody knows what I do on a regular basis. But consumer expectations have reached an all time high. And there is no one way about it. There are so many different ways to engage [00:13:20]between sales associates, a customer brand, buying, a product is not always an easy process especially with so many new brands and new types of products tech enabled products.[00:13:32] There's a lot of questions that happened through the path, the path to purchase. So personal shopping, always a core aspect of the luxury industry. But it has yet to truly been scaled. A lot of clientelling software has been focused in store versus being digitally native. So I think we're going to see a lot more of sales associates being empowered.[00:13:55] And that is associate led goes big into bringing digital into the store and bringing those real human relationships and knowledge online. So, when you're working with an influencer, you're following an influencer, you don't have, you don't always get to talk to them and ask them a question and have a response without a delay.[00:14:14] And this is really where I see personal shopping and clienteling technology, being [00:14:20] able to enable these store associates that are already on payroll to be able to scale up their services, scale, their reach, and for brands to be able to pull that customer engagement from a question into a real time experience.[00:14:36] The front lane staff tech explosion is incredible. When we think of how many of them are already tech enabled, they're already tech savvy. Like you were mentioning for a lot of the social commerce and live streaming. But they are, their job is to work for X brand. And how are we enabling them?[00:14:53] You know, if we spend X amount of percentage of our budget to enable influencers and people who don't work for us, why are we not, doubling down. And enabling the people that do. So a lot of this software is coming out and being adapted for digital, if not coming out digitally native in the first place, but it alleviates a lot of mundane tasks and without losing jobs, [00:15:20] right.[00:15:20] It, it makes your staff more productive. And frankly happier if somebody said Hey, I need you to work into a store, but you can't sell online. You can't talk to a customer that you connected with again. You're just going to start from scratch every hour.[00:15:39] It's the reality, but it let's go ahead and take that a step further. I think with a lot of the younger people in retail This is a lot of people's first jobs. And I think we've all learned a few things from, from Ron and our accidental careers in retail, that this is an opportunity to really bring in talent and building , that brand relationship very early into their careers by being an employee.[00:16:05] So it's getting more and more common and easier for brands to be able to scale up one-to-one conversations and relationships and turn them into conversions. So obviously I'm excited about this area. I believe in personal shopping and product experts and [00:16:20] talent the last thing I would ever want to see in the world is that shopping turns into a completely automated and machine experience.[00:16:28] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, and to your last point there, about how alleviating the mundane tasks, I think that's where a big part of the conversation around automation, especially in the store, keeps getting overlooked. People focus on oh, no, oh no, . The robots are coming, they're going to replace all the employees, but that's not at all right.[00:16:44] It's more about how is that technology going to help get rid of all the mundane, tedious tasks so that those associates and, and personal shoppers can focus on what the job should be, that's helping customers, helping customers shop and buy and convert them. [00:16:58] Casey Golden: Exactly. And, and this all comes back to, coming all the way forward to customer data, right?[00:17:04] Every single one of these is really wrapped around the customer experience, how we serve a customer and the number one process into how do you serve a customer is to understand who they are and build that relationship as soon as. [00:17:18] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. That's right. [00:17:19] #5 - Shopper Experience [00:17:19] Ricardo Belmar: And [00:17:20] that kind of takes us on into number five, which is all about that shopping experience itself.[00:17:24] Particularly in the, what I'm going to call an in store experience revolution that really meets digital and in a more immersive way. So here, I'm talking about how we can add computer vision and AI elements into that shopping experience. There's already lots of talk of how you can leverage AR and VR platforms in the store.[00:17:43] And really what I'm envisioning here is you're coming into a store. And even in addition to having that store associate help you with something, the products themselves, the displays are going to help immerse you in what the product is. So say, you're looking at a display and you pick up a product, maybe there's a surrounding screen or mirror around that that just suddenly starts showing you content about that product.[00:18:05] And it helps you understand better what it is. You know, we, we could think of a grocery shopping model where via AR, I pick up maybe I don't even pick it up. I am just standing near inappropriate area of produce. And I'm looking at, two different varieties of [00:18:20] oranges and I might scratch my head and say, well, which one do I want to buy?[00:18:23] And via AR suddenly I can see popping up in front of me, all kinds of information. What's the difference between those varieties, what kind of flavor they have, some of these things sound silly, but the fact is right, these are little things, even though it's a, it's a big piece of technology. There are little things that make that shopping experience so much more immersive and different from just tapping a product image on your phone and putting it in Instacart order.[00:18:47] So, you know, when we think about how you getting people to continue to want to shop in the store, it's building these immersive experiences. And sometimes that also means it's going to see a rise of cashier less checkout. So yes, Amazon was the first with the GO stores and they're expanding it to their grocery stores, but they're not the only ones doing this.[00:19:04] There are plenty of startups out there delivering this technology. Lots of retailers, both testing it out and even deploying it to the point where we're even now starting to see autonomous stores where these are really meant to be more of a convenience model, right. Where I might walk in and I pick up [00:19:20] something off the shelf, it registers that I picked it up.[00:19:22] I walk out and I get. You know, it's not the kind of, it's a different kind of shopping experience. It's not the one, like if you're going to buy luxury apparel, right. That wouldn't work in that model. But then there are things where I love what in the past year, what Schnucks markets did with their shelf, scanning robots to help eliminate a lot of the tedious employee tasks.[00:19:40] Like you were talking about Casey, where, you know, in the grocery store you're doing like across the chain, thousands upon thousands of temperature checks in the cooler cases all day long. Well, that's a pretty tedious task to ask your staff to do when they could be helping the customer find the item on the shelf.[00:19:55] That's where you're going to deploy things like robots and IOT and use computer vision to just get rid of all these things. So it had those have an indirect impact on the shopper experience. But when you put all of this together, I think now we're really talking about the whole, it's almost like the in-store experience as a customer platform is the way I would think about it, where all these technologies plug in and really immerse the shopper in the experience [00:20:20] by eliminating all the mundane things that kind of surround it and letting at the same time, letting the store staff focus on helping those customers.[00:20:27] So that's the shopper experience revolution I see is going to happen this year. And it's partly because most retailers I've talked to they're significantly increasing their technology spend in ways they never have before. If you think of it as a percentage of sales revenue, and that's because pandemic, I think has caused everyone to wake up and say, Hey, we've got to really convince people why they should be shopping with us, with me, with my brand in my store.[00:20:51] And that's where this is going to come from [00:20:52] Casey Golden: a hundred percent. I've seen so much engaging technology from startups in this space. That's just completely blown away. [00:21:00] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.[00:21:02] #6 - Buy Now Pay Later - Bubble Burst[00:21:02] Casey Golden: So with that, we've got buy now pay later. Oh, I love it when we fund shopaholics anonymous, right. I mean, [00:21:10] Ricardo Belmar: exactly that [00:21:11] Casey Golden: my personal opinion on this just because I've seen some terrible, terrible stories in the past. But at the same time, you know, prices are getting more expensive. [00:21:20] And people are having a harder time getting, you know, a job or they're moving into becoming their own boss.[00:21:26] And with that, we need more payment options. You know, lay away doesn't always exist with companies these days. I know there's some people that are trying to reinvent it, but it's, it gets hotter and hard hotter. And the regulators are the only ones that are not going to know how this is going to shake out.[00:21:41] Klarna has done an incredible job making this a common narrative and a button you see on, on nearly every single e-commerce store. There's a lot of players in this space and some, some major credit card companies and banking operators are cutting out that middleman as well. So this really comes down to, you know, the lack of consumer protections today and really high APRs for buying something that was $40.[00:22:08] Instead of necessarily using it to buy something that was, $4,000. So I think we're going to see a lot of adjustments over the next two years with the buy. Now pay later. One of the biggest constraints I see are [00:22:20] returns and this has been a common concern is when you make a purchase the amount of time, it takes to make that return. And for the retailer to update the payment system of the return can incur late fees and then trying to get the customer service in order to get your return. So deeper integrations, I think that we'll see here easier to be able to start tracking returns.[00:22:41] And I think that this is going to get a lot bigger over the next 12 months and the regulators are coming in a very meaningful way. There's been a lot of, action in it's going to keep some attorneys, well fed let's say that. [00:22:54] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Do we put our line in the sand on this one, Casey, and say the bubble on this one may burst by the end of the year, [00:23:01] Casey Golden: it could very well burst by the end of the year.[00:23:03] And sometimes we kind of have to think about it as well. Should some things exist when it's can very easily negatively impact a consumer. [00:23:11] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Yeah. I agree with you on that one. This one, I do think you're right. It's going to, it keeps getting hotter. It keeps getting more popular, but at some [00:23:20] point there's, it almost seems like, you know that because we're talking about consumers, financial is there, there's a reckoning that comes along somewhere along the way, and the bill comes due so to speak, right?[00:23:29] So whether you're splitting up payments in it, eventually it also comes due and you still gotta pay it eventually. And in some ways, I dunno, I, I hear a lot of stories too. Like you said where this just bites people in the end because you either forget to make the payment or you miss something and no one I'm sure. I'm sure. No one is paying attention to the terms behind these. When they make a purchase using these, these, [00:23:51] Casey Golden: I don't even think you see it. I mean, I've never seen an APR when I've gone through the process, I've done a couple... [00:23:56] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. And they've been lucky enough to get to hide from the regulators so far. So I suspect what we'll see that come about, but before the end of the year, [00:24:05] #7 - AI, ML, Analytics in Sustainability, Traceability & Returns Management[00:24:05] Ricardo Belmar: so on our next one, and I'm going to come back a little bit to something you mentioned that I hadn't even thought about, right, but in this buy now pay later mode. And that's the impact on returns because for number seven, I'm going to talk about how the pervasiveness of [00:24:20] AI and machine learning and analytics in areas like sustainability, traceability, and returns. And I'm kind of putting all these things together because we've been talking about AI and retail for a while.[00:24:31] It's been particularly fruitful in supply chain management, right. Especially during the pandemic and for forecasting, but I think we're going to see this spread to pretty much every operational area of a retailers business. Particularly around getting to predictive and prescriptive analytics where before many retailers were just getting started with it.[00:24:52] This is all going to, it's going to go mainstream big this year. This every area functional area is going to get touched by AI and machine learning. And some way that particularly, I think the most interesting one here is going to be around returns. And that's because this, you know, even if it was a temporary burst, or bubble and increasing e-commerce buying during the pandemic, even if only some of that sticks around.[00:25:15] The fact is if you think about in apparel, right, we're talking easily 35, [00:25:20] 40% return rates from those purchases, and you have so many people doing things like, well, I really like this item, but I don't know if that size is going to work. So I'm going to order it in two sizes and return one. And when you start to add up all those things, just the, the massive reverse logistics and the costs involved with that, it's not just enough to optimize that returns process.[00:25:37] I'm starting to see, at least one really interesting startup I've worked with. and some others that are asking a better question, which is, what can I do to get smart about preventing returns in the first place? And maybe people aren't used to thinking of it that way, but I think it's the right way to look at it is how can I make the overall buying process such that my customer doesn't feel like they have to buy an excess amount of these things and with the intention to return, how can I build that trust in advance?[00:26:03] We're seeing AI and machine learning, being applied to help with that analysis to help the retailer understand how can I change my processes to reduce my return rate overall before the purchase is even made. And I think that's a unique way of framing it. And we're going to see more of that this year.[00:26:17] It's really going to become a popular thing. [00:26:20] I see people only just starting to talk about it in this context, but I think it's going to be much more mainstream by the end of the year. [00:26:25] Casey Golden: I agree. And with that traceability, even product origin and how it got to where it is. It, I think it's, we're going to see a lot more customer facing analytics where the customer's going to start being able to see the sustainability impact, the traceability, the origin, how it was created, how it got to my store in my neighborhood.[00:26:47] And those types of KPIs and analytics will be available for consumer consumption. [00:26:51] Ricardo Belmar: I agree, completely agree. Customers are looking for that now much more than they used to. [00:26:56] #8 - Rapid Delivery Shakeout[00:26:56] Casey Golden: So at number eight, going into rapid delivery, hyper-focused deliverability getting a rapid shake out. I'm in New York. I can have anything on my doorstep and in 30 minutes and it really, during this pandemic it was a necessary adoption.[00:27:13] Customers adopted it, retailers deployed it at any cost to stay alive and to, to maintain [00:27:20] those sales. It's going to be really interesting how we start seeing this shake out over the next 12 months as more stores open and the cost of these last mile delivery services and micro fulfillment.[00:27:31] Hit the bounce hit the bottom line, right? It's been extraordinarily expensive for some rural communities or areas where they've never even thought of having their groceries delivered to becoming a really great convenience that consumers don't want to give up, but there is definitely, you know, lots of different vendors.[00:27:49] And the trend bubble could very easily burst as these ebbs and flows of shutdowns and, and the pandemic, come to an ease So it really comes down to sustainability. It's not inexpensive to operate a last mile or micro fulfillment business in general. And so a lot of that cost has been incurred over onto the customer through like the door dash and Uber's where there's delivery fees and tips and, and things of that nature.[00:28:13] So one of my biggest trends I'm seeing here is companies are looking at where should they have human delivery [00:28:20] and third-party partners versus do it themselves. And implementing drone structures. [00:28:25] Ricardo Belmar: Now that's getting really interesting, right? [00:28:26] Casey Golden: I mean, I couldn't have the drone here in New York.[00:28:29] I don't have a doorman. My little drone would just like sit outside the door. Right.[00:28:34] Ricardo Belmar: It'd just keep hovering and waiting.[00:28:35] Casey Golden: It would just sit there and keep pattering. I mean, I can just foresee, you know, a whole bunch of people with pool nets, you know, out on the streets, [00:28:43] grabbing drones, [00:28:45] Ricardo Belmar: how many drones can I catch today!.[00:28:48] Casey Golden: I'm like, oh, look at that. It's a madewell bag. I've got this kind of redefines, you know, think about like, you know, these doorstep, burglars maybe everybody's going to move into the air, but it really does. It offers solutions that we've never really even thought about. Right. And, and really deploying so much more technology into the delivery aspect.[00:29:09] And I couldn't imagine going back to a world where my life wasn't delivered on my doorstep. I like it. [00:29:16] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Right, right. [00:29:17] Casey Golden: I don't think the company... [00:29:18] Ricardo Belmar: nobody is going back, [00:29:20][00:29:20] Casey Golden: but it is, does come down to the customer experience and really making sure that your supply chains are optimized to be able to support [00:29:29] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, a hundred, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. I think what, to your point, when you, when you kind of started this one, there there's been such an explosion of these. At some point, there just becomes too many of these third party services for this rapid delivery, right? So at some level you know, even in New York, if you've got 10 of these, can you really handle 20 of them that does the city need 20 of these services or whatever the number is?[00:29:50] I think what we're saying is, they're certainly not going away because the convenience is just too good for too many consumers. And it's probably not likely , most retailers can do it on their own because of the cost and the internal costs. Not, not that the third-party service is going to be a low cost for them, but I just think, there's gotta be some consolidation and these are just too many of these services out.[00:30:10] There's gotta be some consolidation before the end of the year. [00:30:12] Casey Golden: Yeah. I definitely see that. It's going to have to cover that whole entire lifecycle. And they're going to need to combine the resources, I think. [00:30:18] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. Yeah, I think that totally [00:30:20] totally makes sense. [00:30:20] #9 - Low-code/No-code Revolution[00:30:20] Ricardo Belmar: Well, that's bringing us to number nine, so I'm going to get really techie on this one.[00:30:24] And, and I'm going to talk about low-code and no-code software development here, and I feel like outside of your, your hardcore deep developer techie circles, not a lot of talk, it seems about what the benefits of low code technology is. But I can't think of almost any major retailer that's not using these technologies right now and the significance of this and why I'm putting this on my list is that the, level of adoption and the speed of which new applications are going to get rolled out by retailers driven by low code is just going to go through the roof.[00:30:57] I think this is where if we, if we're not already there, we're going to see the turning point where most new applications retailers bring out, are going to be built using the low code technology, if for no other reason than for just speed of development and deployment. So what used to take six months to create that's no longer good enough, right?[00:31:14] I think every, certainly the major retailers learned during the pandemic. It's not acceptable to say, oh, that product [00:31:20] is going to take six months to finish. Nope, it's gotta be done in six weeks or less. And even that might take too long, it's gotta be a more iterative process. We have to be able to iterate more often and faster to get better and better.[00:31:30] And the best way to do that right now is with low code technology, especially when almost every new customer service or customer experience that retailers come out with. You know, someone is always rightfully going to say, well, okay, once we bring this out, where's the report that's going to tell me how successful it is? Where's the dashboard that's going to show me its impact on conversion rate or the increase in average order value. Who's building that view for the management team and store ops that wants to know how this is running, who is building this so that the marketing team knows where they have to focus some of their marketing budget to try to get more impact all those kinds of reporting and all kinds of dashboards, who is those used to be a real pain to create, right?[00:32:09] You go to IT and you ask them and they'd say it takes six months for us to put that together. Well, that's not acceptable anymore. If the project has to get done in six weeks. So does all the reporting and the dashboards and everything else with it, and the [00:32:20] low-code technologies that are out there, make it super easy to do these things in a rapid way to the point where now it can even say, oh great, you need a new dashboard.[00:32:28] You know, you guys in marketing can build that yourselves. And if you run into problems, we'll help you out. And that's okay now where, before you wouldn't see a lot of IT, teams want to do that because they felt like they were giving up control, risking their very existence. But now what happens?[00:32:41] Now, they're, they're more in a support role where they're helping their business colleagues actually get these things done for themselves in a meaningful, fast way that just helps the business overall. I think these are all things, with low code, you can do it. There's no reason to ever say no to these kinds of things, which is going to just help with everything retailers learned over the last two years about agility and resilience.[00:33:02] This is going to be the development platform of choice. [00:33:05] Casey Golden: I think this is going to be one of the most disruptive areas and retail technology whether or not it's it's low code or plug and play solutions. Professional service models, I think, is going to be the biggest disruption in this space because it's [00:33:20] predominantly been a professional services led business where we don't have six months let alone 18 months to roll out a new solution.[00:33:29] Because by the time you go live. The market's changed. And so it's really going to come down to speed and adoption and experimenting and getting the KPIs of is this working, do we do it for another three months and being able to turn on and off solutions to find what the right recipe is? Because six months to implement, we've got nine months until holiday for next year, right?[00:33:52] How many? And we've got 10 things that, [00:33:56] Ricardo Belmar: and every one of them, you know, now going in, right, you've learned that you've got to iterate on every single one of those to get it to the point where you want it to be. And you gotta learn from each iteration and keep feeding that back in. And this is the technology that makes that easier to do [00:34:09] Casey Golden: a hundred percent, because if it wasn't complicated enough before.[00:34:14] #10 - web3, Crypto, NFTs, and The Metaverse![00:34:14] Casey Golden: The complexity of going into our number 10 of web3. [00:34:18] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. [00:34:20] Exactly. Bring us home with number 10, Casey.[00:34:22] This is the big one.[00:34:24] Casey Golden: This is enough to give any brand or retail whiplash, because we're still working on our regular business on, I don't know, you can call it web two. But we're still optimizing and brands are still optimizing the way we currently do business.[00:34:37] Digital transformation initiatives are at an all time. High tech spend is at an all time high and the creators and consumers are adopting web three faster than a brand can even absorb the information to understand what it is and how it's going to impact their business. [00:34:56] So this is one of my playgrounds, you can say. I think it's one of the most exciting and fun things to be able to deploy in a brand is to start experimenting in the metaverse building out thought theories on your company on whether or not you're accepting crypto currencies and getting NFTs out into the market. [00:35:14] We don't know what exactly the metaverse or web three is going to provide to [00:35:20]build a long-term strategy around, but the creators and consumers are adopting at such a rapid rate that we've seen several, big brands just drop in. And say, I don't know what we're doing, but we've got a great partner and we're going to figure it out and we're going to do something and we're going to experiment now.[00:35:37] Well, I've also heard a lot of brands say, we're gonna wait and see, we have to stop waiting to see how it shakes out. This is going to be a longterm. It's here to stay. I don't think it's going anywhere. But it's really gonna come down to, I think who is at Balenciaga is the first one of the first companies to actually create a division internally and make hires. Nike just purchased artifact to pull them in there, you know, web three partner , and absorbed it.[00:36:05] And I think these are the right moves. We're not gonna be able to go ahead and take this all on ourselves. I think partners are going to be key in this area and. Starting with payment options is a really easy first move start, [00:36:20] accepting cryptocurrency. Coinbase business has started coming in to be able to integrate with Shopify stores.[00:36:25] Shopify is working on being able to sell NFTs on the Shopify store and we've got new marketplaces that are popping up that is essentially your new type of retailer. Right? My big take on web three and the future of what three is really gonna come down to data interoperability, which is a really, really terrible word.[00:36:46] But if you have a relationship with the brand in real life, how is that being translated over into web three? And how's the company measuring it? What's your overlap? Right now these are, we built a lot of islands in the real life with systems not integrated And brands. And now we're building on web three where this isn't one thing.[00:37:06] It's not one piece of technology. It's, we're building a lot of islands again. [00:37:10] Ricardo Belmar: Right. [00:37:11] Casey Golden: And I think this is going to come down to how does a consumer walk across four worlds and not lose the experience that they're having [00:37:20] with the brand. And how is this being able to be shoppable? Are you shipping in real life?[00:37:24] Is it a digital asset only? Is that an experience? I think the commerce aspect being added into the metaverse in web three is going to be the one aspect that can push customer adoption through the roof. But it also offers brands, the ability to experiment with less risk [00:37:43] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think the keyword there is experiment, right?[00:37:45] I see a lot of people talking about this in a way where, where there's taking a perspective where, oh, my, my commerce plain and metaverse and web three is almost like taking the place of my existing commerce and the physical space. And, I think it's a subtle difference.[00:37:59] But if I change that around and say, well, how am I using web three in the metaverse augment that shopping experience to use it in a way that makes my brand loyalty more sticky. I think that's a better way of evaluating how you're going to take advantage of this, you know, in this let's call it this first year because it's going to constantly evolve.[00:38:18] I don't think anyone's ready to say , yup, by the [00:38:20] end of the year, the whole metaverse is ready to go [00:38:21] Casey Golden: no [00:38:22] Ricardo Belmar: and whatever form that means it's going to evolve and every brand has to evolve with it and they've got to learn as they go. So I think. A hundred percent with the way you described this. I think the key again is going to be retailers, brands, they got to get into the mindset of experimenting with this now and throughout the year and try different kinds of experiments. It's not just about finding one approach and iterating over it five times over the next 12 months. It's about trying five totally different things. And I'm going to come out here and say, you know, if your experimentation is to say, how do I duplicate my store in the metaverse I think you're doing it wrong.[00:38:58] Casey Golden: I I've just seen some things that I loved seeing that H and M was going in with at scale.[00:39:04] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:39:04] Casey Golden: And then I, I'm just asking myself, why is my avatar standing on an escalator [00:39:10] Ricardo Belmar: exactly. Right. [00:39:13] The digital space and everything. Just come to me. Yeah, exactly. Where's the fun in that [00:39:19] Casey Golden: [00:39:20] interesting ways to engage that customer and let these imaginations just blossom. I mean, retail space, the fashion space, the beauty space. We have some of the most passionate and creative and talented minds that already work for us. And we've constantly had to design around a bill of materials and work with the supply chain and constraints of not having that instant access to a customer to even try something before it even exists. Right. [00:39:49] Ricardo Belmar: Right. [00:39:50] Casey Golden: This can open up so many opportunities to bring things to market in the digital world before you even go to production and experiment and discover products and engage with brands that you may have had a perception of the brand because you didn't have a brick and mortar store, or maybe you didn't get great service.[00:40:10] Or the assortment was different, right? I get the best assortment in the world. When we're here in New York, we get the best collections. Every single store has the [00:40:20] best product, but when you go down into a bottom door and you walk into a retailer and it's got six skews or 12 skews of a brand, you're not really getting that full experience because there's dollars attached to it.[00:40:32] There's logistics, distribution. This is really going to be able to provide brands a way to create moments that they could never afford to create in the real world. And to do it in a way that lets the creativity of the brand, take the spotlight. So I'm, I'm very bull on web three. But at the end of the day, if the world can't connect to each other and the brands can't understand who their customer is on web three, to understand how much money they need to build that lifetime value and merge some of these KPIs that they're used to seeing. I think it's going to take a long time. So I'm hoping that more brands partner with people who are well-versed in the space and can lead leadership into fail fast experiment. The only negative thing that can [00:41:20] happen to your company is not participating [00:41:22] Ricardo Belmar: that's right. And that that's the best kind of takeaway. I think for every retailer and brand from this is to not be afraid of it and just experiment freely. And, and I would even add too, for retailers should look at this as, how am I going to work with the brands that I sell in my retail business to build something unique.[00:41:42] So if I'm am going to think about this in terms of a virtual store model, that instead of, you know, relying on aisles and shelves and escalators, right? Cause that adds no value to doing that. Right? Exactly. You don't need a digital hand picking things up off the shelf and throwing them back. But if you work with the brands, [00:42:02] and think in terms of like little miniature brand experiences that, your customer in your virtual store is going to go from one brand experience to another, to get really immersed with them. Cause then where's that customer getting to value. They're going to see it from the brand and from the place that connected that customer to these brands. [00:42:20] It's kind of like the original advantage in physical stores at a department store was supposed to have because it was the place you went to to see the collection of all the brands you like in one place. And I think there's maybe a new opportunity to do something kind of like that here.[00:42:34] As long as, as the retailer, you embrace working with the brand to do something unique and you're in your virtual space. [00:42:40] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean the storylines and the storytelling opportunity here of understanding the product, understanding the brand, their ethos, things that are important to them. This is going to be a really great narrative for product discovery and discovery.[00:42:55] And, and pulling the narrative away from you left this in your cart. You wanted it, right, right. Or this really hard sell to add the level of romance of product discovery and being able to, to, you know, really connect with consumers in a way to say like, wow, this brand is awesome. And I'm having so much fun, engaging with it.[00:43:17] I should probably buy something by now. [00:43:20][00:43:20] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly, exactly. And I'll, throw in one more component to this too, because everybody likes to focus on the consumer side of it. But from the retail businesses perspective, think about what you can do in this space to make your environment better for your employees, even if it's as basic as training.[00:43:36] You know, what, if you did your, your associate training in your metaverse space versus in the physical store, can you make that training so much more engaging that the employee learns that much faster and retains the knowledge that much better? So now when they go and actually work with a customer, whether it's in that physical store or, big surprise, wait for it. When that associate helps the customer in the virtual space, because there's no reason you can't have that interaction too. Right? If you have the right associate, it's no different than the live streaming we talked about in the earlier prediction now they're really equipped, right?[00:44:07] And, and circling back again right now that employee is motivated. They're having fun doing this and via web three. Or in the metaverse with a customer, you've made the whole process more engaging. Not only does it help build your brand [00:44:20] loyalty with the customer, but it most likely helps you retain that employee.[00:44:23] And we don't ever know that that's going to be more competitive, [00:44:25] Casey Golden: employees are. Our first customer, you know my first job in retail, I still have a aggressive brand affinity to them because I had a great experience. And I'm still resonate with the brand, whether or not I'm too old to be wearing it or not.[00:44:40] My employee experience was so good that I am a die hard advocate, practically, 20 years later. [00:44:48] Ricardo Belmar: There you go. [00:44:49] Casey Golden: You know, so they're our first customers and it's an opportunity to, to make it or break it for a long LTV and word of mouth. So I'm, really excited for this. It can be done so well. And so far, I think we've seen some ways that it can be also done so bad.[00:45:05] Ricardo Belmar: Right. That's so true. That's so true. So that's, it's going to make it fun to watch this year. But I think that's why we can't do a trends and predictions for the year without talking about this the whole way web3 metaverse play, because it's just going to be both fun and scary to watch what the [00:45:20] stations and experiments are with this.[00:45:23] But it's going to be a major learning experience for everybody [00:45:26] Casey Golden: as a place where we can actually kind of bring in, you know, all press is, bad press, any participation in web three, right? [00:45:34] Ricardo Belmar: It's the beauty of treating it like an experiment, . You know, you're going to learn from it no matter what, and just make it.[00:45:39] And no one, no one should have the expectation that there's an end game to this 12 months from now. [00:45:46] Right? Exactly. Exactly. [00:45:50] That's right. That's right. Yeah. So waiting for those that's right. Waiting for those, of course, when we get those flying cars are going to be dodging drones. So it's going to be a lot more challenging than we think,[00:46:03] because now I'm going to have this picture in my mind. When you said, the people chasing drones with their butterfly nets are going to be to flying cars now hanging out, the window trying to scoop out of the mid air all, as many drones as they can. That's the part that nobody's thinking about.[00:46:18] Are we ready for that?[00:46:20] Casey Golden: [00:46:20] Are we ready for the future? [00:46:21] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. That or I'm just picturing people on New York city rooftops trying to catch passing drones. [00:46:28] Casey Golden: These are the realities we live in. [00:46:30] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. That's right. Somebody has got to think about it before we make it a reality.[00:46:34] Casey Golden: There is no commerce without loss prevention. [00:46:39] Ricardo Belmar: That's a new kind of lost prevention, right? That hopefully somebody out there is thinking about. Yep. Maybe that'll be on our list next year.[00:46:49] All right. Well with that, I think we're ready to close this out. That was our 10. And hopefully everybody who listens to this episode either whether you agree or disagree with our 10, we want to hear from you. So hit us up on Twitter or LinkedIn and let us know what you think after you hear about it and join us again for the next episode.[00:47:06] We'll be back here on Callin very soon. Thanks everybody.Show Closing[00:47:09] Casey Golden: If you enjoyed the show, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on apple podcast. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. So you don't miss a minute. Want to know more about what we talked about? Take a look at our show notes for handy links and more deets.[00:47:25] I'm your cohost Casey Golden. [00:47:27] Ricardo Belmar: If you'd like to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at caseycgolden and Ricardo_Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on Twitter at Retail Razor on LinkedIn and on our YouTube channel for video versions of each episode and bonus content. [00:47:42] I'm your host Ricardo Belmar.[00:47:44] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.[00:47:48] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. IF you cut through the clutter. Until next time, THIS is the Retail Razor Show. 

S1E3 – The Retail Avengers & The Celebration of RetailROIWelcome to Season 1, Episode 3, the third ever episode of The Retail Razor Show!I’m your host, Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top 100 Retail Influencer, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and lead partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.And I’m your co-host, Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock and slayer of retail frankenstacks!Together, we’re your guides on the retail transformation journey. Whether you're thinking digital and online, mobile, or brick & mortar stores, there'll be something for you!For episode 3 we have a truly special treat in what may be the most important episode we do this season, and it’s only episode 3! We’re celebrating the history and accomplishments of industry charity organization, RetailROI, with two special guests:·       Greg Buzek, President & Secretary of RetailROI, Inc., and Founder & President of IHL Group.·       Vicki Cantrell, Vice President of RetailROI, Inc., and co-founder of Vendors in Partnership Awards.These two retail legends and many more you’ll hear about in the Clubhouse recording lead one of the most important organizations in the retail ecosystem today. RetailROI’s purpose is to raise awareness and provide real solutions for the more than 400 million vulnerable children worldwide by working with other charities serving those children, such as orphans, foster kids, building schools, bringing clean water to communities, and more. Give a listen to this episode to learn what RetailROI has accomplished in its history over the past decade, what the future holds, and most importantly, what you can do to support them. You’ll hear about RetailROI’s most important fundraiser – Super Saturday, happening at NRF 2022 on January 15th. For more information about RetailROI, the important work this group does for vulnerable children everywhere through all the charities they work with, to register for Super Saturday if you’re a retailer, or to learn how you can sponsor Super Saturday if you’re a solution provider, visit https://www.retailroi.orgThe Retail Razor ShowFollow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazorConnect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazorJoin our club on Clubhouse: http://bit.ly/RRazorClubListen to us on Callin: https://bit.ly/RRCallinSubscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTubeSubscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShowRetail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPodHost → Ricardo Belmar,Follow on Twitter - ****https://bit.ly/twRBelmarConnect on LinkedIn - ****https://bit.ly/LIRBelmarRead my comments on RetailWire - ****https://bit.ly/RWRBelmarCo-host → Casey Golden,Follow on Twitter - ****https://bit.ly/twCaseyConnect on LinkedIn - ****https://bit.ly/LICaseyRead my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCaseyTRANSCRIPTS1E3 Retail Avengers & The Celebration of RetailROI[00:00:22] Ricardo Belmar: Hello. Good morning, good afternoon. Or good evening, whatever time of day you're listening. Welcome. Welcome. This is season one, episode three, the third ever episode of the retail razor show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar, RETHINK Retail top 100 influencer and one of RIS News, top 10 movers and shakers in retail for 2021. And lead partner marketing advisor for retail and consumer goods at Microsoft [00:00:46] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host Casey Golden CEO of Luxlock, where I'm obsessed with the relationship between a brand and a consumer determined to slay retail, Frank enstacks [00:00:57] Ricardo Belmar: All right, Casey. So how many Franken stacks have you slain since last episode? Inquiring listeners want to know? [00:01:03] Casey Golden: Well, now that I'm counting, we've got three in the works.[00:01:06] Ricardo Belmar: That's incredible. Can't wait to hear how many more it is next time. Let's see if our listeners start tweeting out their guesses for next time on how many that might be. [00:01:13] Casey Golden: I love a good tweet storm.[00:01:15] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely me too. Me too. So Casey, this episode is a really special one for me and a topic that I think carries [00:01:22] so much meaning for so many people in retail, I'm talking of course, about the retail ROI charity organization. That's run by Greg Buzek and supported by some incredibly thoughtful and giving people, including our second special guest this week, Vicki Cantrell. Someone with an incredibly rich history in retail.[00:01:39] And for those that don't know, retail ROI, it's an organization that helps vulnerable children around the world, whether it might be orphans, foster kids adoptions, or just helping schools that lack running water or electricity or need just a better chance at education and bringing food to their table.[00:01:56] Retail ROI works with a number of other charities to bring these missions to life. And they've helped hundreds of thousands of kids around the world over the last decade. I first became involved with them about five or six years ago in a project they supported in Liberia during the Ebola crisis and even a webinar to school kids in Honduras about career paths.[00:02:15] But I'll save that story for after we listen to the session [00:02:18] Casey Golden: And this was an emotional clubhouse sesh, listening to [00:02:22] Greg and Vicki's stories. You just, you can't help but celebrate their massive accomplishments. [00:02:27] Ricardo Belmar: That is so true. Absolutely true. And actually, one of our retail avengers team, Jeff Roster, he's also had an incredibly huge role in their activities over the years.[00:02:37] In fact, he's the one that introduced me to retail ROI all those years ago. [00:02:40] Casey Golden: This is such an important topic. One with such rich accomplishments. And Greg is just one of the nicest people in retail and in Vicki, she's just literally amazing. It's such a treat to have conversations like this and share the impact retail ROI is making with vulnerable communities and supporting our youth. Let's get started![00:03:01] Ricardo Belmar: I'm totally with you. This might just be one of the most powerful, both heartwarming and heart wrenching podcast episodes we're going to do this season . We'll let Greg and Vicky and Jeff tell us the real story behind retail ROI, all of their past accomplishments and where they're going in the future.[00:03:17] So let's give a listen to the Retail Avengers and the Celebration of RetailROI.[00:03:22]Clubhouse Session[00:03:30] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome everybody to another session in the Retail Razor Club room. We've got a special one today where we're doing a celebration of one of what I feel is one of the most important organizations in retail today and that's Retail ROI. And some of you in the audience are very familiar with retail ROI and what it's accomplished and what it's done in the past.[00:03:56] And maybe others in the audience might not be quite as familiar. You'll get to learn quite a bit about it through the course of today's session. We've got a couple of special guests with us today, Greg Buzek and Vicki Cantrell, who I probably can't think of anyone else who can do a better job of telling us everything there is to know about RetailROI[00:04:15] and and as I say that, I'm sure Jeff is ready to, to jump in and, and raise his hand as well. Being the person that introduced me to retail ROI many years ago. So with that, why don't I ask Greg and Vicki, to give a brief introduction to yourselves. Vickie, why don't you go first?[00:04:29] Vicki Cantrell: Hi, [00:04:30] everybody. Great to be here on a Friday afternoon at five o'clock. I will give Ricardo any grief cause everybody does, but this is a topic that's worth a Friday at five o'clock. And I've been involved with retail ROI since the beginning and, and pleased to be working alongside Greg and Randy to figure out how we increase our shop and how we make a great experience and, and divide the money and make the biggest impact.[00:05:00] So I started 10, 11, 12. Are we 12, 11 years and have many great experiences not only traveling myself to various countries, but also taking both my children there, and the impact has been on our life and our hearts pretty impactful and happy to tell you more about it. I've been in retail for ever and ever and all sides of retail.[00:05:28] So [00:05:30] I guess that's how I got involved because it's my fellow cohorts in retail that brought this to bear[00:05:36] Greg?[00:05:37] How RetailROI Began[00:05:37] Greg Buzek: And I'm Greg Buzek I guess my day job or my first day job is being president of IHL group we're a retail analyst firm Gosh, this started because I had started a orphan care ministry at our church and we were at Oracle open world.[00:05:53] And it was the day that Lehman brothers went under September 15th, 2008. And Paul Singer of SuperValu and previously with target was there. And I knew he was an adoption advocate. So we had a meeting and said, you know, Hey, maybe we can do something in the industry. And we could call it, you know, at that time there was a lot of mergers and acquisitions and everything was focused on efficiency.[00:06:17] And then we just call it, we'll call it ROI, a play on words which ends up being the world's geekiest name for a charity retail ROI. And we just said, we call it the retail orphan initiative and that's how we get our acronym there. [00:06:30] And that day with the help of Rose Spicer from Oracle Paul Singer basically did his OpenWorld presentation about 10 minutes on target and the rest on adoption , and we were all astounded and we came out of that meeting and said, Let's let's do something together.[00:06:49] And I know Jeff was there Rose was there Cathy Hotka, Mark Milstein, and I think Cathy Marder were there and we said, yeah, let's do something together. Instead of just competing with each other, we all know each other. We see each other all the time. It'd be fun to do something together in the industry.[00:07:06] So that's the start of retail ROI . And we had everybody assumed that Paul would be the guy to lead it. Paul had been the guy that took over for Dave Thomas, at Wendy's lobbying Congress for funds, for foster kids and adoption. In fact, he has started a group called the congressional coalition on adoption Institute , that he helped fund.[00:07:25] Initially that is the only thing in Washington that has over [00:07:30] 350 members of Congress, I think in total that are on the caucus together and agree on something. Paul, was a giant for that. So we all assumed he would run it. There were three of us, myself, Paul and Mark that put up the initial seed money to get started.[00:07:44] And we signed the paperwork. And three days after we signed the paperwork, Paul called me and said Greg, I just got a call from the neurosurgeon. I have a tumor and I have to have surgery next Monday. And unfortunately Paul, when he had surgery never regained the ability to speak clearly and, and reason and stuff.[00:08:07] So it kind of fell, fell to me to take the leadership role for retail ROI. So that's how we started in 2008, [00:08:15] Ricardo Belmar: Thanks for the quick description for that, Greg. Jeff, you've got a pretty long history with retail ROI as well. why don't you give a quick introduction, [00:08:21] Jeff Roster: hi, Jeff roster. Let's see, what am I a co-host of a, I guess this week in innovation, on some advisory boards and try [00:08:30] to keep Ricardo out of trouble at the center for retail transformation, which we're both doing a very poor job at so lots of trouble down the road.[00:08:40] Ricardo Belmar: We're working on that.[00:08:41][00:08:41] How RetailROI Works[00:08:41] Ricardo Belmar: So Greg Vicki, let me ask maybe a couple of questions. So with that history that Greg just gave , on how things started with RetailROI. Give us a quick overview on how retail ROI works. I always describe this to everyone as a charity group, that's basically built by the retail industry, run by people in the retail industry and that it works with other charities to do a lot of great work around the world, helping children in need, whether it's orphan children's foster care.[00:09:09] Greg Buzek: Sure. Yeah, just to begin with, the first step we had to make is we needed to raise, Hey, we had a charity, we got to raise money.[00:09:17] So we said how do we, how do we raise money? And we looked around the room and said, gosh, we know events. We know who all the best speakers are. And let's put on an event aligned with the timing of the NRF [00:09:30] show. We'll call it Super Saturday and we'll invite all the retailers to come for free.[00:09:35] And we'll charge vendors that want to sell to retailers a fee, a sponsorship fee to get access. So we just basically said ladies night at a bar, so to speak was the approach. And that became our fundraiser in terms of the initial charities that we did. The first initial charities were people that I had already started working with through some other experience.[00:09:57] And then after that, it started to blossom as other people got involved in. So we have really three criteria when it comes to working with charities. Obviously it's gotta be a 5 0 1 C3 based in the United States. They're involved with vulnerable children, orphan foster care clean water, something to do with vulnerable children in some, in some manner.[00:10:19] Number two, it can't be a church or a synagogue or a faith. It's gotta be a separate entity altogether. So it can have a faith-based component to it. [00:10:30] But it's not something that's part of a community of faith in and of itself. And then the third piece of it is somebody in the industry has to be personally involved in the charity themselves and vouch for the integrity of that charity.[00:10:44] And then we start really small with grants as low as $5,000. And we go up from there, we present that back to the board with the results, and then, then we grow from there. So in total, I think we've, we've teamed up with over 55 charities to date with different variety of grants and they work in 27 different countries.[00:11:04] Ricardo Belmar: Thanks for that overview, Greg. I want to read some stats that you've given me before, just for, to kind of set the stage a bit for everyone here on what some of the accomplishments are. And to let everyone know, we recently at Microsoft had a, special giving event held to try to raise some funds for retail ROI, and Greg and Vicki were kind enough to join that session.[00:11:22] And Greg presented , a little bit of background for the employees that were attending that event. And I just want to read some of those and see if anybody on the stage [00:11:30] has some reactions and wants to share some other info from that. So the one that kind of grabbed me a lot that you mentioned, Greg was, if orphans were a country, they would be the eighth largest country in the world.[00:11:40] And for other one was that for foster kids that age out of the U S system within 18 months, 85% of the boys are homeless or in prison. And over 70% of the girls are pregnant, homeless, or in prison. Those stats are just astounding to me. And I'd never had thought about just how significant,, this really is.[00:12:01] Greg Buzek: Yeah, it's a, it's a huge issue. And that's, that's part of our, our role. We see our role as three parts. One's the knowledge of this problem that you just outlined. Two is leveraging our skill, sets our networks who we know what we know to make a difference and coming alongside different organizations that are doing great work, where we can double triple or quadruple the impact.[00:12:24] And then third is funding for projects . So you just gave some of the core stats out there[00:12:30] for things. [00:12:30] Accomplishments[00:12:30] Ricardo Belmar: And then I'm going to go ahead and share some of the accomplishments stats that you shared with me before. So this is since 2010 retail, ROI has funded over 206 projects in 27 countries.[00:12:42] Installed 26 computer labs. I think those were all in schools, correct [00:12:47] Greg Buzek: schools and, well, there's been a couple that have been like an after afterschool programs. [00:12:51] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, okay. Okay. [00:12:53] Yep. And then also on the, on the list of what you provided before, built or remodeled 21 school buildings in or homes and help rescue over 1400 women and children from sex trafficking through border monitoring, help support over 1500 adoptions and built 14 wells and clean water projects.[00:13:11] I think overall you, calculated and estimated that over 252,000 children have been helped by the people of retail ROI since 2010, which I think has an amazing accomplishment worth celebrating.. [00:13:23] Greg Buzek: Yeah. And, to be, just to be perfectly transparent, it's our charity partners that have done this work.[00:13:29] We've, [00:13:30] we've kind of played matchmaker at times , and lended some, funding for things. But it's the, the real benefits of retail ROI is when we take really successful people in the retail industry and connect them with these charities and then let them go just, just make the introduction turn I say, turn the light bulb on if I can turn the light bulb on and just point people in the right direction.[00:13:54] Amazing things happen. So I'll give you an example. So this makes it all clear. So we had a need in Honduras, we had a school of 650 kids that literally could, they had enough money to feed the kids or to pay the teachers. They couldn't do both. So they reached out to us and we said, well what do you need?[00:14:14] He says, well, we need corn. Cause we make 4,300 tortillas a day by hand of there to feed the kids. And so he said, we looked at it and said, well, who, where can we get corn? And we said, who's the biggest buyer of corn? Well happened to be [00:14:30] Cargill. So we placed a call to Cargill. Cargill ended up donating the two containers of corn.[00:14:36] There was only one problem. It came in individual pieces. And they were literally, you know, comes out of the grain silo into the train car and that's how they deliver it. Well, we needed to figure out how to get it to Honduras and some sort of package. So somebody at Cargill then took it upon himself and said, you know what?[00:14:52] I know somebody, that's got a seed packing plant, let me call them and see if they're willing to pack it for us. And so they did, they agree. Fisher seas agreed to packing in, into 50 pound bags . And then there was another lady who does shipping and logistics for a living. She ships containers all over the world[00:15:08] every day, she came on board and she scheduled the FDA inspection, the shipping, and we had a year supply of food delivered for $7,500 for 650 people. That's just one example of a project that was there. [00:15:22] Vicki Cantrell: You know, Ricardo that's a, that's a great one that Greg talks about, but when we talk about [00:15:30] bringing retailers or bringing people in the industry alongside these charities, it could be in any number of ways.[00:15:37] And it's largely based on, as his example shows what's already in their sweet spot, how their job every day, and just suddenly applying what they do every day to, to a new situation. We had a guy Bob Moncrief who developed an entire curriculum around. Kind of how kids could build their business. And what we, you know, when Greg talked about that, we go alongside our charity partners.[00:16:08] These are people that are on the ground and understand how to, you know, get things where they need to be. But they also, what we're trying to do is give these charities or people, we work with the ability to sustain themselves, whether it be growing crops or, or whatever. And so this was a [00:16:30] situation where these kids, when they graduate, they needed to have a skill start a business, go to college, et cetera.[00:16:37] And so he developed an entire curriculum. I think he was with Accenture at the time, Greg. And so we had this startup shark tank competition where we on our trip to Honduras, Jeff, me, Laurie Mitchell-Keller you know, several other heavy hitters in the industry. We're able to judge these and listen to their pitch as is after they had been through the whole curriculum.[00:17:04] So I guess, you know, it really is and that has continued every year and has now expanded into Jamaica, [00:17:13] Greg Buzek: Jamaica, south Africa. Yeah. So four different countries that has gone. In fact, just recently in Jamaica Parker, Avery group to shout out to them. They've taken it to a whole new level with the entrepreneurial program and we had six [00:17:30] students go through an eight week course.[00:17:32] And I'm telling you the winning presentation there. I've seen 40 year old MBAs not do as well as this 18 year old. And sharing their vision for the cosmetics business they wanted to create, basically it's a cosmetics for African or dark skin, people that have acne. And how do you, how do you provide cosmetics that heals the skin as well as provides beauty and makeup on top of it.[00:18:01] And it was just fabulous and they invested Parker, Avery invested. I think it was close to $6,000 a us into seed funding to help get that launched there as a result. So it's, it's really special when, like I said, when we can get people connected and go and there's so many, there's so many examples of it.[00:18:23] Sometimes it's just funding. So like in the country of Liberia, The the [00:18:30] heart over there was, Hey, you got 85% unemployment. So you've got kids in schools. We now need to get them job skills. Well, one of the great things that happened is we started funding, a vocational training program there in both construction computers computer learning what we had interior design cosmetology.[00:18:51] And this week we got noticed that 54 kids graduated from those programs and have the opportunity to jobs. But here's where it's really exciting through the funding of Intel and HP. We built a school there. We paid for a school to be built. It cost about $35,000 to, for a K through six school. The kids in the construction on the supervised, by the the engineers over there that were teaching them.[00:19:17] They built their duplicate of that school for middle school for $10,000. As a result of that. And they learned along the way, and they've since built a dorm for the, for the girls [00:19:30] side. And so that's, that's one there. So those are the kind of projects that we take on where we can really impact things.[00:19:38] Vicki Cantrell: And I would think of it the way that to think about it is it's a hand up. Not a handout. [00:19:43] Greg Buzek: Right, right. And it's how do you change? How do you give an in South Africa as a perfect example of it? Because in South Africa is the only place where we have a continuity of care from three years old, all the way up through getting jobs through college.[00:19:59] We have there's a school there in, for, for little three to five-year-old preschool kids that are our kids from the townships that are there. We actually help pay for for kids to go to English speaking school for about 15 to 20 kids there. And then 14 of those kids to go into a leadership high school there, which is the only mixed gender mixed mixed race school in that area.[00:20:26] And it's like a us it's as high quality as a U S private [00:20:30] school so we have 14 there, we seed funded a small college fund , and we just two years ago had our first student come from the township and graduate from college. And I got word today that we have five more that are graduating this week. In South Africa as a result of that opportunity. So that continuity of care. And then what, so when we go there, you know, on a trip, the small kids, we've helped build the school. We, we essentially just make sure that our money's being used properly play with the kids and have fun there.[00:21:02] But when we go to that high school, we teach class. We literally share our career trajectory. We, we give forecasts Dave Finnegan from Orvis and myself, we taught about leading, what the impact of AI and machine learning is going to be, how graphene can transform the world for things, he shared, how they've got fishing rods with graphene now that have accelerometers in there, and you can benchmark yourselves on the fishing rod compared to the best fishermen [00:21:30] in the world with doing things. So as to inspir on these things, I think Vicki's done a call. You've done a call down there, right. With the students. Did you not? [00:21:42] Vicki Cantrell: And, we taught marketing classes when we were in Honduras.[00:21:46] Also, you know, there's one thing that I know we're going to probably talk about trips, but they are the heart of. How we see what we can do and how we get our reward, kind of just seeing these things, but. It's directly related to what Greg is talking about. So we've had the great fortune to take our children to many of us have taken our children on these trips.[00:22:17] And, [00:22:18] The Trips[00:22:18] Ricardo Belmar: And Vicki, can you, can you kind of describe for everyone, how the trips take form and when we say we're talking about these RetailROI trips, what does that really mean? So [00:22:27] Vicki Cantrell: I'll, I'll use Honduras as an example. We have [00:22:30] somebody in. In our kind of group that kind of is the leader for a particular country.[00:22:36] And and again, remember that we're working with on the ground a charity. So they help us with the logistics. We don't have to figure a ton of this out ourselves. But we arrange to all get to the airport at about the same time flying from various and sundry places and across the U S and we try to get there around the same time and we have transportation that gets us to our final destination.[00:23:03] Many times the hotels that we stay at are they're certainly absolutely fine. And sometimes very nice. Greg had a very great experience with almost a resort. And then we spend the time. At the, at wherever we are, whether it's, you know, at the school or in, in my case, in Honduras, this was the place with the 600 kids [00:23:30] of various ages.[00:23:31] And so our meals are, are handled, et cetera. And so again, you're working with a partner on the ground, so it's, we always feel safe. And our children, we say. You know, 13 is about the youngest, maybe 12, depending upon the child. But I took, I started taking my son when he was 15, I believe he's been on six or six trips and my daughter's been on two or three trips.[00:24:01] You know, just to dovetail what Greg talked about. So here we had a panel on the stage talking to the, I guess, technically the juniors and seniors about interviewing techniques and we did role playing and we did, some mock interviews and we talked about each person's business, whether it was SAP or Gartner or IHL or whatever, we talked about the businesses and we talked about how they can, what, how they.[00:24:29] [00:24:30] Be in a corporate environment and all of this. And I will tell you, because kids, all of you who have kids don't listen to their parents. It was, our kids got as much of an education as all of the children at that school. And I, I would honestly say that we've gotten tremendous benefit for our retail children who have listened to the people that are in our industry while they're in a foreign country.[00:24:58] It's just one of those little side benefits, [00:25:01] Greg Buzek: I think Jeff would agree,. Yeah. [00:25:05] Jeff Roster: Yeah. I can't emphasize what Vicki just said more probably the single best amount of money I've ever spent in my life was taking my two twins to Honduras four times. I dunno, what was it? Probably 10, 10, 12 grand, for all those, all those fall, three of us for those four times, they got a better business education than they probably did at the UC system that they both went through.[00:25:26] I mean, when you think about, you know, Vicky, when you think about what our kids [00:25:30] heard in Honduras, when they heard, when they got to hear business executives talk and, and they listened, but then they also got to see what happens. You know, if things don't work well on a country. And so they just came back better people, they just flat out, came back better people, and it just grey was a great, great investment.[00:25:48] Greg Buzek: The most fun I have in retail ROI is going on a trip where we take our teams and I get to watch my friends. Being at the, at the things that their teams are doing. We were the handing out the Tom's shoes instead of buying the Tom's shoes and to watch the kids thrive and to watch the parents and the pride in their parents of watching their children give back was really, really special.[00:26:17] When we do trips, we have some minor projects, but we're not, it's not like you would say with a church mission trip or somewhere, Hey, we're going to go build something and we're going to do something. I mean, that's a waste of time for, for most of us. So [00:26:30] we, we, some of us may have a skill set there, but what we do have is a lot of knowledge and a lot of networking.[00:26:37] And so when we ask people to go on trips if we've got our students with us, certainly we got to keep them busy , but for the most part for the adults in the industry, we want you to see the work, just come experience the work, see the impact because there's literally 30 things a day that we do and take for granted that we don't even think about because we're so proficient at it that the charities we're working at, it's a real struggle..[00:27:04] And they may not know how to do that. So most charities, for instance, they live month to month. Are we going to get enough money here to make it through the month? And then you bring somebody down and says, Hey, what's your five-year plan? Where would you like to be in five years? Let me walk you through that and put together a plan for how you can move forward and reach the goals you want to look for.[00:27:25] Cause most times you're just too busy doing the work to [00:27:30] think through the plan of how you might get there. And so that becomes really advantageous to them. So every trip we have a brainstorming session every single night at what we saw and how we can help and whose network we can tap in to help solve that issue.[00:27:46] And that's where the real value comes in. It's not that we go build a building or, you know things there, you know? Yes. We teach classes. Yes. We provide some things there. But the real value is when we come back after seeing the project. And put our networks and our knowledge together, John Geyerman's a perfect example.[00:28:06] John went down there, saw the kitchen situation. And he, he was vice president of Schlotzky's franchise operations. He went back to Schlotzky's and asked all the suppliers to donate the equipment. And when he put a million dollar kitchen into that school for about $65,000 total cost but he didn't stop there because he was so touched by the kids that he was [00:28:30] serving.[00:28:30] He said, these kids can benefit through certification. So he took the food safety course of Schlotzsky's translated it into Spanish, taught that class down there on a next trip and then gave certification to the kids so they could go get jobs at hotels, et cetera. That was all his idea.. After being down there, seeing it and working, and those are the kinds of things I haven't.[00:28:52] Mark Haney, another one, he was installing Chromebooks with an SD card for us down in Dominican Republic. He said, there's a better way of doing this. And he came up with this concept of internet in a box using a raspberry PI, and now they've created an, their own charity called control alt delete poverty, which may be a geekier name than retail ROI, but they have now put computer labs in 27 countries.[00:29:19] And it's literally a carry on bag that can provide first world education in three different languages anywhere in the world. At a moment's notice because it creates its own little wifi network, [00:29:30] battery powered. And those are the kinds of things that happen when people go on trips and say, there's a better way of doing this.[00:29:37] And it's been so special to watch and be part of.[00:29:40] Getting involved[00:29:40] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that seems like in such an amazing process, when you get the knowledge and skill sets from all the folks who are coming on the trip and you come up with all these new ideas. The other thing I wanted to ask, so that that's one way from the trips. How else do you have retailers? And I shouldn't just say retailers, because I know there's plenty of engagement from people throughout the industry, not just from retailers, but how do, how do people get involved to begin with, what are the inroads that, how do you reach people and how do they first get involved typically [00:30:12] Greg Buzek: that typically the first start for most people is the Super Saturday event. And simply coming to Super Saturday for every retailer that attends Super Saturday we generally can raise about $5,000 in sponsorship money from vendors. And that's usually the first step. [00:30:30] Now, when you think about $5,000, what does that mean?[00:30:32] Well, that means, that means first world education for about 400 kids. That means clean water for community of 500 by just, and just attending the event. So that's the first step. The next thing is just joining your colleagues on a trip and Jeff can attest to this. I'll let Jeff share this story.[00:30:51] Just the, the impact of the community that is built on the trip and the breakdown of barriers. When it comes to business relationships, as a result, that's a lot better than golf. So, Jeff, do you want to share your story with Lori about Lori and how, when you were at Gartner, the challenges of getting her on a call.[00:31:09] Jeff Roster: Well, probably the most effective in let's see in 20 plus years of being an analyst is probably the single most effective time I ever spent was that those two hour bus rides in Honduras and Vicki was on those. I mean, we literally had a who's who on that, on that bus. And as an analyst being trapped with, with leaders from all the software companies was just [00:31:30]phenomenal.[00:31:30] And so what was neat about that is, especially as an analyst and, the vendor analyst relationship can be kind of, loving like a linebacker in a, in a running back. But when you're actually working and sweating and, and out of your, your business attire, it was just phenomenal.[00:31:43] I mean, it just was absolutely phenomenal. Now that doesn't mean there was any, I pulled back on any of the analysis I would do with any vendor, but it's just nice to be able to have that sort of underlying relationship and, and it really cool. I mean, it was really, probably easily, I think the best money I've ever spent.[00:31:59] And I, I don't say that, I don't say that loosely. It. just was, it was a grand slam on, on every single level.[00:32:05] Ricardo Belmar: Jeff, you brought up a good point about the vendor, community and supplier community in retail and how their participation is. And that's the side of the industry that I come from. And that's how I got involved with retail ROI. But, this all makes over an open question for you, Jeff Vicky, Greg, really, for any of you, how do you engage with the, the vendor community on this apart from, just as the sponsorship at the super Saturday event, that typically is what gets the part of the community [00:32:30] engaged in supporting the charities?[00:32:31] Or are there other things that happen based on your experience?[00:32:34] Vicki Cantrell: I would say there's two aspects of it. And the reason that that Greg talks about super Saturday is just. The exposure. Okay. It may be treated as a sponsorship, but what the real benefit is the content that happens that day and the exposure.[00:32:50] The other thing where solution providers get involved is when people understand the need. Okay. And let's say it happens to be a retailer and they're dealing with a project or see a need, they have an entire ecosystem of solution providers that they deal with in their everyday life. And they will reach out to them to, to get involved or, or to help.[00:33:17] So those are, you know, two ways that I would think I'm sure Greg can add on to that. [00:33:24] Greg Buzek: Well, they've, they've helped the vendors have also leveraged what they do. For part of this. So we've had [00:33:30] situations where people want to donate their cloud business, first things. We've had an offer. We've had an offer from a vendor before to handle the mobile devices.[00:33:39] One of our charities has a strawberry business in Zambia and you know, right now it's still a paper-based business with delivery drivers and other things, but to set up a, you know, full on accounting system and that is, that is just like you would have for any vendor here calling on your local Kroger or Walmart associated with that and offering their solutions that way.[00:34:03] The other thing that is funding related is, is often incorporating retail ROI in their customer events. When they've done things like for SAP, we did a food packing project Jeff was involved in that one where they filled a container worth of protein rich meals for orphans and vulnerable kids in the afternoon instead of playing golf.[00:34:23] Jeff Roster: That was a fantastic event, actually. That was Lori. Again, cause she got so motivated from being in Honduras. She [00:34:30] actually built that into what was it? One of the SAP conferences we literally took over [00:34:34] Greg Buzek: a full room or something like that. Yeah. Something, it [00:34:37] Jeff Roster: was, it might've been bigger than that, Greg.[00:34:38] But it was, it was a big conference and they brought in teams and what happened was like SAP sales teams from regions would come in and would compete with each other. And you know, you've got a bunch of engineers in there. So these guys are all recreating the processes while they're filling and there was hooping and hollering.[00:34:56] Gosh, it was probably the most fun I've had in a business event in an awful long time, because Anna was, it was, you know, I don't know how many hundreds of boxes we've we, we produced, but it was a ton and literally a ton, more than a ton [00:35:07] Greg Buzek: and close to 25,000 meals that you guys provided. [00:35:12] Ricardo Belmar: Wow. [00:35:12] Jeff Roster: So there's ways of just, I guess the point of, of ROI is just, how do we, how do we do something impactful, but fun and, and support business.[00:35:23] And I would argue, I'm sure more business was done inside that room than, than out in the golf course, because [00:35:30] you know, salespeople would bring their clients and it was just, it was a blast we've got, I mean, dusty and all that stuff, but just a phenomenal thing. And there's probably 15 other examples where the other executives that have adapted different, different processes inside their own business processes.[00:35:45] And that's really the kind of magic. [00:35:47] Greg Buzek: Yeah, and I can't overestimate or underestimate how valuable it is when a company joins a trip and says, you know what, we want to make this part of our core belief system for our company. And that's what happened with Aptos. When they got involved, they started going to a variety of different places and decided Hey, we, we would really like to adopt the program with Lifesong and Haiti, and they've done, I think, nine different trips now and help build a school a community center like with just like a hotel, I guess there's like a hotel type thing.[00:36:22] They brought in people from Marriott to teach you know, hospitality training there. Then Verlin got involved when he [00:36:30] was with Verizon and got satellite communications there, but the company is behind it and has made it part of everything that they do for customer events and continues to invest.[00:36:40] And Parker, Avery is now taking over. Jamaica for us, which is really the next place where we plan on taking a lot of our youth, because we don't have the language barrier and we have a huge opportunity in the middle of Jamaica there. So it's a nice weekend trip, a long weekend where we can take our kids as well as, as other executives, and really start to have an impact on a community, providing job opportunities, providing insight training, [00:37:09] Finding Charities[00:37:09] Ricardo Belmar: Greg, let me ask you, with all the examples that everyone's brought up here today, how, how do you come across the different charities? Do they come to you? Do the retailers, for example, who want to get involved, say Greg I'm, I'm working with this charity and I think they'd be a great candidate for retail ROI.[00:37:25] How does that happen?[00:37:26] Greg Buzek: yeah, that has happened. And that's where we love to have that where it's [00:37:30] not all on Greg Vicky and Randy to pick the charity. So we've had several charities, like Jeff has been involved with Terry with Senegal and they created a charity to reach out there. But it's, it's usually somebody who's passionately involved with the charity.[00:37:46] So Gary Craig in Canada has been involved with a group called sunrise homes and it's the actual work is in Myanmar , which obviously has been through a lot in the past year , but it's an orphan home in Myanmar. And that's the start because they're personally involved with this charity and I didn't know anything about it when it started, but we started with a very small project.[00:38:08] We get the video back, we get the story back. We let, Gary share about the impact and then we decide whether or not we want to invest more into that. We've done that with some charities quite a bit, because so many people have gone on trips with them that, it's just kind of like a no-brainer same thing with like free for life international John Geyerman.[00:38:29] And I [00:38:30] mentioned earlier, Got introduced to free for life through super Saturday after doing that work in Honduras. And he's now chairman of the board of that charity. And they're the ones that did the rescue of over 1500 women, I think now and children on the border of Nepal and India as a result of that.[00:38:50] So there are things that, you know, where do you bring the results back and say $10,000 helped rescue 1500 women this year? You know, that's, no brainer to do things. The best way is that way. And then I've had others that I've just been fortunate as I've gone through my learning curve to say, man, this really has a huge return.[00:39:13] So I'll give you an example of two here in the United States. One's called. Say families, the other one is called together for good. What we found out through that process is over half the kids that go into foster care in the United States are not there because [00:39:30] of neglect or abuse in any way.[00:39:32] It just meant at a point of crisis, there was no safety net for the kids that that crisis could be escaping an abusive relationship that could be drug abuse, short-term prison, sentence, somebody that has an accident and has to have a surgery. And there's no safe place for the kids, but it's tragic. Once those kids go into the foster system, they not only cost $92,000 a year for that, the average time is three years in the system.[00:40:01] So you're talking $270,000 there. Well, if that happens to you or me , we usually have family members or somebody else that can watch our children. So what safe families and together for good is, they basically provide that safety net for that short-term care. So a family steps up and said, you know what?[00:40:19] I watched these children for 45 days, 60 days, mom and dad still have, they still have legal responsibility for them, but in this point of crisis, [00:40:30] we're going to come alongside and be that safety net for this family in that cost about a thousand dollars per family. So that thousand dollars covers , all the things related to social workers, transportation, medical care, all that stuff for the children that saves a family, saves the the government $270,000 on average for a thousand dollars.[00:40:55] So we look at that ROI and say, that makes sense. To do. So we've had over 22,000 kids now, 22,000 families that have been preserved through those programs as a result of this. And so those are things that, you know through my education, I just personally found and said, this makes sense for what we're doing and this, this needs to increase because it has a big societal impact.[00:41:20] Ricardo Belmar:[00:41:21] A little goes a long way to make a difference[00:41:21] Ricardo Belmar: One of the things that I've always been both surprised and impressed with when I listened to all the different charities at super Saturday is how effective, [00:41:30] what seems on the surface, like a relatively small amount of funding, but the amount of impact that can have you know, one, one example.[00:41:38] I always remember, cause it was, I think one of the first ones that it got involved in that first year that that we sponsored super Saturday Greg and it was with more than me in Liberia. And I think this was when they through some of the sponsorship dollars, right. They bought the first ambulance in that area, I remember.[00:41:53] And I remember you telling me afterwards that, the impact was, and this for everyone listening was during the Ebola crisis at that time. And if you remember when the year, the time magazine labeled the Ebola warriors there, person of the year it was that timeframe. And I remember you telling me the impact of the ambulance meant that doctors visits in that town went from what otherwise could take a day's trip just to get to four days, four days.[00:42:19] But it went down to like 45 minutes. Right. Right. Which is [00:42:23] just such a massive impact. [00:42:25] Greg Buzek: Yeah. Yeah. With Ebola first day, you feel like you got the cold or the flu second [00:42:30] day, it gets a little more serious, but it still feels like malaria or the flu things that you normally have. But the third day is when the really bad stuff happens.[00:42:40] And by day four you're dead. So when you can imagine that in the largest slum in Liberia, which is an area about the size of your normal large mall in the United States in a hundred thousand people live there, ebola's in the middle of it. And if you touch a person that's infected with Ebola, you get Ebola. And that's how many people are in that area.[00:43:03] And it was taking four days for an ambulance to come. And so when Katie, she, when she asked me for money for an ambulance, it was pretty much a no brainer for me. And so, and here was the other part, there were only four ambulances in the entire country, which is the size of New Jersey. Yeah. So you can imagine how, how tough that would be, but yeah, they were able to get the call rate down to less than an hour.[00:43:30][00:43:30] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that that was just an amazing impact for what, and ultimately is not that great a spend, just to pay for that ambulance compared to what I think the expectation that a lot of people probably have before they learn about what you're doing and what all the charities are doing is that, you know, how can I raise enough money to have an impact?[00:43:46] And I think the biggest takeaway from all the work it's ROI does is that at any amount, can be put to good use. [00:43:55] Yeah. And that's an example. Yeah. I'm sorry. I just wanted to say that's an example of where all we did was provide money period, and it had that impact. Go ahead. [00:44:04] Vicki Cantrell: You know, let's talk about the money for a minute because, as we all reach a point in our lives where we really feel like we want to be doing more and giving back, and I remember when it felt that way, and there's always this strange feeling when you hit that point in your life of.[00:44:21] How can I make an impact? Yes. I could write a check to something, and, but it didn't have, [00:44:30] it didn't feel like it was something I was connected to because you really do want to make an impact beyond being able to donate. And so I have learned a hundred times over that. It. And you think whatever I, as a single person would do is not going to have enough of an impact.[00:44:50] And what I've learned and seen a hundred times is all you have to do is impact one person, literally one person, because that person gets such a benefit. It is such a, circle of, it just ripples out from there, you help one person, they got a leg up or they, it you've meant something to them at that moment in their life.[00:45:17] They help somebody else. They help somebody else. Your impact is astounding just by helping one person. And we help a [00:45:30] lot of people and we help them a lot of, you know, just the interaction. Listening to these kids' stories and, sponsoring them, which is minimal money impact, but it makes a huge difference to their life.[00:45:45] So you will make a huge difference with just the smallest amount of effort because of the ripple effect that you will create. [00:45:56] Greg Buzek: Yeah. So I'll give you an I'm sorry, I give you one example with a real live person . When we went in 2016 to Liberia, we met a young lady named Grace who was going into the 12th grade.[00:46:13] And this is prior to Mark creating these raspberry PI computer labs. She was in the 11th grade. She lost both of her parents to Ebola and she got placed in this orphanage. And she had potential and we gave her a Chromebook, a $250 Chromebook, [00:46:30] and she not only graduated from high school, she went on to graduate college and is now a school teacher because we were able to give her a Chromebook with Khan academy to help her learn and finish her education for 250 bucks.[00:46:46] Ricardo Belmar: That's fantastic. remember at each year at each super Saturday event, , you've always got one, at least one of those stories of how that, impact has affected that one person. They've been on onstage at super saturday and told their story from, everything about their story from where, where the low point was and how everything's changed for them once these, what you might otherwise think are very small impacts, but they have such a major change in someone's life it happens. I think these are just amazing stories. [00:47:17] Greg Buzek: Yeah. We have a special reprised edition of a young man named Demetrius Napolitano. Demetrius is coming back to share an update on his life. And for the listeners here, [00:47:30] Demetrius is a young man who grew up in 32 different foster homes in Harlem growing up and he had one social worker that believed in him.[00:47:39] He should have been a statistic. He should have been dead. And he was on that path and that social worker believed in him. And he has since graduated from NYU. He was an intern in Congress. There, he got to work for the Robin hood foundation in New York city with John Paul Tudor Jones .[00:47:59] And he's now impacting youth in his region there, but I don't want to give the whole story. He's an amazing young man who happened to get adopted when he was 24 by a 32 year old, a couple there, and then, so now he has the name Demetrius and the Napolitano. So he's a young black man that looks like Eddie Murphy with an Italian last name.[00:48:21] And it's, it's a really special story and we're going to be catching up with him at super Saturday. [00:48:27] Fundraising[00:48:27] Ricardo Belmar: That's fantastic. That's fantastic. So, [00:48:30] Greg Vicki, let me ask you, and we've kind of talked about how some of the retailers get involved. We talked about how a solution providers in retail have helped but both from their sponsorship and, and resources.[00:48:41] How do other people, you know, let's broaden kind of the retail ecosystem, if you will, and how do other people get involved? Maybe they're not a retailer, they may not work for a tech company providing retail solutions, but how, how does one get involved with retail ROI? [00:48:55] Greg Buzek: Well, I guess I said attending, coming to super Saturday, being a part of that, we also have a fundraiser each year related to the March madness.[00:49:03] We call it March gladness, where we do small things where people donate gift cards that we have as prizes and we play brackets. And so we built a school in Haiti that by playing brackets and winning prizes, so that's, that's a real simple way broader than that is just joining a trip, get involved, join a trip.[00:49:24] I will tell you one way you can impact it has nothing to do with retail ROI, but has an amazing [00:49:30] impact go to our YouTube channel retail, ROI, YouTube channel, and look up Nicole Taylor and the social life program that is right in your community. What Nicole found out is that social workers Are some of the people with the highest turnover in the country because of the burnout and the emotional impact of that.[00:49:50] They found is children that go into the foster care system. If they have one social worker, 74% of the time, they find permanence and find a family to live in. 74% of the time. When that social worker changes, it's only 26% of the time. So they created a program called socialite, which was just adopting a social worker, encouraging a social worker, providing a gift card and note of thank you, flowers on their birthday, inviting them to lunch and just telling them that they mattered in their one county.[00:50:24] They dropped the turnover rate from 69% to 29% in [00:50:30] one year. Just by people being appreciated for what they do. And that's something we can do in every one of our communities is, find out from our local foster care. Can we get a list of folks in and leverage our networks in our area? Maybe it's your community of faith that wants to come and be a part of that, but just adopting those folks encouraging those folks, telling them that they matter.[00:50:54] They're making a difference in, in that has such a dramatic impact on the potential for children that they serve. It's just, it's hard to quantify it because it's so impactful.[00:51:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. That one is just amazing to me, the level of impact and effect it can have just by doing something so simple, right. To just thank someone for what [00:51:17] Greg Buzek: Right. And there's a saying in this, this foster care adoption community is, is not, everybody's called to adopt. Not every person is called to be a foster care, but we can all do something to assist that [00:51:30] can be respite care for an adoptive family that can be just providing a dinner.[00:51:34] They're providing a night out for a foster family . But just coming alongside of those folks in that community to make a difference. , [00:51:42] More Great Work[00:51:42] Ricardo Belmar: so one question for you given the different charities you're working with today, are there any of those that maybe we haven't touched on yet that you want to highlight that maybe anybody listening or someone that catches on the replay might want to get involved with?[00:51:56] Greg Buzek: Well, gosh, I don't want to pick, I don't want to pick favorites. There I've mentioned several, I think there's opportunities with control alt delete poverty. If you want to sponsor a computer lab. And first world education. There's one called the Fergus Simpson foundation that we're working with in Jamaica.[00:52:12] That is really a grassroots just getting started there. But an opportunity to completely impact, the community of Chappleton in Jamaica with job opportunities and with you know, one of the things that happens is that, you have give a man a [00:52:30] fish versus teach a man to fish.[00:52:31] Well, what happens if there's no pond? And that's what we're doing is helping create a pond in that part of Jamaica. I will give you actually one it's a for-profit company that I think retailers and anybody on this call may be interested in. Then there's a group called tide rise. If you look up tide rise, I think it's tide rise.co co, but look it up.[00:52:54] Behind it is the organization that created the app called flip that is digitized as retail circulars. So you can see deals. They the CEO of that company went to Malawi and was working with an orphanage and came up with that same problem. How do you, if there's no pond, how do you teach a man to fish?[00:53:14] So they created a technology business incubator there that cleans data for artificial intelligence and they took their lead sales guy for flip. And he's now leading this organization and they're looking for projects from retailers [00:53:30] and companies that want to have clean data and tag data for artificial intelligence.[00:53:35] And that's what the folks there do in this community now. And it's building up jobs in that community as a result.[00:53:41] So tide rise, Ferguson, some foundation control, alt delete poverty are some of those.. [00:53:47] Vicki Cantrell: There's also Kasita Copan in Honduras, which is a different place than we used to go there. And they have been able to purchase a big section of property during very recently in the last six months. And so they are going to be able to serve many more kids and have them have a family environment.[00:54:11] And so they, that's another kind of enclosed thing that people can really see the impact of their involvement. [00:54:19] Greg Buzek: And one last one comes to mind for impact in the United States, as well as Dominican Republic to the thrive and joy foundation was started by Mary , [00:54:30] who used to be with chain store, age magazine Jay and Mary tragically lost their son, Nick.[00:54:35] When he was 19 years old by a freak lightening strike. in Southern California. He was washing his feet off in the ocean and got struck by lightning. We encouraged him. He had a passion for Dominican Republic for some reason, and they started going down there and that's been common life mission for them.[00:54:53] They started a US-based version called C 11 that's underneath them, which is 11 character traits. And they're teaching them in public high schools here in the United States and it's become clubs. So just like you have the, the singing club and the chess club or the fellowship of Christian athletes or whatever, they now have a club called C 11.[00:55:17] That's now in the LA county schools where the kids meet with Jay and Mary and other folks that become leaders to teach character qualities that they may not be getting at home or, at [00:55:30] school. And they were about two years into that one. So that's a, that's a charity as well that I would encourage people to get involved with.[00:55:37] Ricardo Belmar: All of those are absolutely wonderful ones. Thanks for sharing all those Greg. Before we close out the room, as we're coming to the top of the hour here, any last thing you want to mention about the upcoming super Saturday event? [00:55:52] Greg Buzek: Well, it's, it's the the Saturday before NRF January 15th.[00:55:56] It's going to be right in times square. You can find out more information, the agenda at retail, roi.org, and there'll be a link right on the homepage there. We have former special agents of the FBI sharing the latest ransomware techniques and things coming in and sharing how to protect yourself and your family and your companies as a result of that. We have, Andy Laudato is going to talk about his, new book and share some things on how to build a world-class IT organization, , and how to build innovation , even during a point of crisis[00:56:30] , and then we're going to share our latest data from consumer study what's going on with all these digital journeys.[00:56:36] And then finally our annual store study that we do with RIS news. So that's all part of the content that day. And then you get to meet a lot of the charities right there. [00:56:45] Ricardo Belmar: This is always the best event during NRF week. [00:56:48] Greg Buzek: Thank you,[00:56:49] Ricardo Belmar: Vicki. Any, final comments you want to share just in general about ROI or about the super Saturday or how everyone can support them [00:56:57] Vicki Cantrell: No, I, you know, I think that we covered all the different aspects. Again, there is no substitute for seeing it feeling it. We always say and it's true in super Saturday, too, a little bit, but when you go on a trip, you experience everything with all five senses and that's what really makes the impact.[00:57:18] Ricardo Belmar: Wonderful. know I haven't been fortunate enough to go on one of the trips, but I hope that at some point I'll have a chance to do that. But I always make a point of getting super Saturday on my agenda. Cause I wouldn't miss that for [00:57:30] anything. Both for the content and just to learn about what all the charities are doing and do anything I can to, help with that.[00:57:35] Jeff, any final thoughts from you? [00:57:37] Jeff Roster: Gosh, it's just such an amazing thing. When you can put your business skills to work. I think we've said it again and again and again, when you get into Senegal or Congo or Honduras or any of the places I've been, it doesn't take much. It just, any anybody that's an assistant manager.[00:57:53] 22 year old system manager in a store can just crush it. When you go into, into emerging economies, our skills are our ability to schedule or just absorb information. Those are all just the skills. These are all they're all crying for. And by the way, a lot of the charities could use that skill just as much. [00:58:10] Gosh, the charities folks are, you know, the heart's two sizes too big, but sometimes their business experiences two sizes too small, and that is a perfect match for what any retailer could do. It's really, really worth the effort. Take your kids, get them involved. You'll never, you'll never regret it.[00:58:25] It's just a huge, huge opportunity that you think you're doing good. And [00:58:30] guess what you end up getting more than you'll ever give guarantee in that? [00:58:33] Ricardo Belmar: I think that's a great point. Great point. So I think on that note, we will go ahead and close out the room. .[00:58:38] I know I recognize a lot of names down there and a lot of great supporters for retail, ROI and hope to see some of you at the super Saturday and thanks everyone for joining us. We want to thank Greg Vicki. It's been wonderful hearing all the stories today. I always enjoy talking about retail ROI and trying to find new ways to support all the great work that's being done.[00:58:58] So thank you so much for joining us today and everyone have a great weekend and we hope to see you the next time in the retail razor room. Thanks everyone. Bye. [00:59:08] Greg Buzek: Thank you.Welcome Back[00:59:13] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome back everybody. We hope that was as memorable and inspiring a session for all of our listeners as it was for the two of us.. [00:59:25] Casey Golden: I think it's important for us to remember how much our supply chains and network can be leveraged for more than clothes. How'd you get involved with retail ROI Ricardo. [00:59:34] Ricardo Belmar: I mentioned earlier that Jeff Roster was the one who introduced me to ROI.[00:59:38] We were actually at a retail conference back in. I want to say it was probably 2015 or so. And I was talking with Jeff and one of the other retailers at the conference came up and started asking Jeff about an upcoming Retail ROI activity.[00:59:52] So I asked Jeff what he was talking about because it was new to me. I didn't really know the details or the specifics. So Jeff explained it to me. He talked about one of the projects he was involved in, in Honduras, which I think I think Greg mentioned that one during the clubhouse with the kids at the school there, and they didn't like that shark tank activity, they talked about that Vicky mentioned that was so cool.[01:00:13][01:00:13] So Jeff at the time was looking for someone who could. Get on a webinar with the kids in the school and kind of talk about career paths in business and technology. He said to me, he had noticed that the kids in the school really didn't have a good sense for what that was like. And in their minds, they had all these, different visions of how you know, that the kid in this chair next to them might one day, be working against them in some way, or that they'd all be competing for the same job.[01:00:36] And he felt like they all had the wrong impression. But his challenge, it turns out was that he didn't speak Spanish. So he couldn't give that session . And as he's explaining this to me, I said, well, Jeff, I can do that in Spanish. You want me to join a webinar with you? I'm happy to do it. So he was excited and you know, we set that up a couple of weeks later, I talked for an hour to the kids in the school.[01:00:54] So it was really great. And I can see how all of this really worked together with all the things that Vicki talked about in that project.[01:00:59] And then after that, he told me a little bit more about what Super Saturday was like and introduced me to Greg. So I made sure the company I was at, we became a sponsor that following Super Saturday. And it turns out that was the project mentioned in the clubhouse [01:01:13] where the money we raised it also as a sponsor, right?[01:01:16] Help get retailers to come to our booth, but that money held by the ambulance in Liberia that made such a difference by making the response time, go from four days down to less than an hour in the middle of that crisis. And like Greg explained by the time somebody got to the fourth day of being sick with that, they were likely not going to make it .[01:01:33] So it was such a huge deal. And in that organization More Than Me , when they got up. And she started talking about her history and how she created that charity and what they were doing in Liberia. That was one of those where everyone sitting in the audience starts wondering, you know what, somebody please pass around a tissue box because this story is just so heart-wrenching and so unbelievable to see the people who are talking to us, where they've been and how they got to where they are now and the amazing things they're accomplishing.[01:02:01] All because retail ROI was there to raise the money that they needed . And as they mentioned in the clubhouse, we're not talking huge dollar amounts every little bit actually has a huge impact. [01:02:10] Casey Golden: Yeah. It's magic happens at [01:02:13] NRF and I mean, we are really a family when it comes to retail, no matter where we work, our paths always cross.[01:02:19] So we should definitely be kicking off NRF with Super Saturday [01:02:25] Ricardo Belmar: it's so absolutely is the best way to get an NRF started. And you're right. It really shows how, no matter how big an industry, this is, when you hear analysts put dollar numbers to the size of this retail, market and commerce around the world.[01:02:38] But it really ends up being a small community. When you look at the people that are involved, you're in retail long enough, and everybody knows each other. And Super Saturday is just such a great way to do that. So for any retailers out there listening to this episode, it's not too late now to sign up to the 2022 Super Saturday at NRF on January 15th.[01:02:57] And if you're in on the vendor side of the community and, you've heard this story and you're saying to yourself, wow, how do I get involved? Or like you heard Greg and Vicki talk about in the clubhouse, just go to the retail ROI website. You'll find the link in the show notes. And [01:03:13]it's not too late to sign up as a sponsor.[01:03:15] You get the benefit of retailers showing more interest in what you do and how you support them. All because you're participating now and you're helping to fund all of these activities that retailers are trying to drive impact for all around the world. So please do get involved. We really hope that as many people as possible that are listening, run out there and join the cause with retail ROI.[01:03:37] Casey Golden: I'm really excited for this year.[01:03:39] Ricardo Belmar: Me too. Me too. I'm looking forward to, it's always the best event of every NRF. And I think this year, Greg has something special planned where there's gonna be someone from I think it's a, former FBI agent is going to talk about cybersecurity and the retail world . So it should be a really magical session at this year. I hope everybody participates. [01:03:56] So Casey, I think with that, it is time to bring our third episode of the show to an end.Show Closing[01:03:59] Casey Golden: If you enjoyed the show, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on apple podcast. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. So you don't miss a minute. Want to know more about what we talked about? Take a look at our show notes for handy links and more deets.[01:04:15] I'm your cohost Casey Golden. [01:04:17] Ricardo Belmar: If you'd like to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at caseycgolden and Ricardo_Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on Twitter at Retail Razor on LinkedIn and on our YouTube channel for video versions of each episode and bonus content. [01:04:32] I'm your host Ricardo Belmar.[01:04:34] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.[01:04:38] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. IF you cut through the clutter. Until next time, THIS is the Retail Razor Show. 

S1E2 – The Retail Avengers & The Future of Frontline Staff, Part 2Welcome to Season 1, Episode 2, the second ever episode of The Retail Razor Show!I’m your host, Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top 100 Retail Influencer, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and lead partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.And I’m your co-host, Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock and slayer of retail frankenstacks!Together, we’re your guides on the retail transformation journey. Whether you're thinking digital and online, mobile, or brick & mortar stores, there'll be something for you!In episode 2 we dive into the future of retail frontline workers, with none other than Ron Thurston, author of Retail Pride, The Guide to Celebrating Your Accidental Career. Ron joins our Retail Avengers team on Clubhouse to talk about the impact of AI and automation on store teams and how retailers can, and should, equip their frontline staff with technology. Plus, Ron gives us a preview of his latest project, kicking off in 2022 – Retail In America!For more information about Ron, and how you can Take Pride Today in your retail career, visit Ron’s website: https://www.retailpride.comThe Retail Razor ShowFollow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazorConnect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazorJoin our club on Clubhouse: http://bit.ly/RRazorClubListen to us on Callin: https://bit.ly/RRCallinSubscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTubeSubscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShowRetail Razor Show Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.comHost → Ricardo Belmar,Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmarConnect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmarCo-host → Casey Golden,Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCaseyConnect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

S1E1 – The Retail Avengers & The Future of Frontline Staff, Part 1Welcome to Season 1, Episode 1, the first-ever episode of The Retail Razor Show!I’m your host, Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top 100 Retail Influencer, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and lead partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.And I’m your co-host, Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock and slayer of retail frankenstacks!Together, we’re your guides on the retail transformation journey. Whether you're thinking digital and online, mobile, or brick & mortar stores, there'll be something for you!In episode 1 we dive into the future of retail frontline workers, with none other than Ron Thurston, author of Retail Pride, The Guide to Celebrating Your Accidental Career. Ron joins our Retail Avengers team on Clubhouse to talk about what retailers need to do to foster the right environment for their store teams.For more information about Ron, and how you can Take Pride Today in your retail career, visit Ron’s website: https://www.retailpride.comThe Retail Razor ShowFollow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazorConnect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazorJoin our club on Clubhouse: http://bit.ly/RRazorClubListen to us on Callin: https://bit.ly/RRCallinSubscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTubeSubscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShowRetail Razor Show Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.comHost → Ricardo Belmar,Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmarConnect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmarCo-host → Casey Golden,Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCaseyConnect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

The Retail Razor Show podcast is almost here! Springing out of Clubhouse and into your favorite podcast player and YouTube! Meet your host, Ricardo Belmar, and co-host, Casey Golden in this trailer and hear a few spoilers about upcoming topics and guests. We're here to cut through the clutter and talk about what #retailers, and #retailtech providers, need to know about how digital is transforming #retail to fuel growth, deliver amazing customer & employee experiences, and create resilient and intelligent supply chains. We'll be your guides through this journey!Subscribe now so you don't miss a single minute!Remember, this is the best time to be in retail - IF you can cut through the clutter...Until next time, THIS is the Retail Razor Show!#retail #supplychain #customerexperience #CX #frontlineworkers #retailtechnology #retailstrategy #digitaltransformation #retailtrends #retailstrategy #socialcommerce #livestreaming #innovation